


Just Can’t Stop

by lilbluednacer



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Barchie I guess?, Betty’s having somewhat of a psychological breakdown here, Bughead and Varchie going on a break, Canon Divergent Post 4.16, Cheating, Dealing With Trauma, F/M, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Archie/Grundy, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship Problems, Relationship Study, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, exploring all three ships in this one, self destructive behavior, the core four end up single for awhile
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23387155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbluednacer/pseuds/lilbluednacer
Summary: After Jughead Jones comes back everything goes back to normal, as normal as Riverdale can get, anyway.But nothing is the same.
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews/Veronica Lodge, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 237
Kudos: 151





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before 4.17 aired so the Barchie kiss in Archie’s garage never happened here, this is my version of how the cheating storyline could’ve gone before it went canon on the show.
> 
> I would like to point out that while I don’t condone cheating, it is getting explored here and the characters may behave in ways you personally find distasteful. If you’re triggered by that topic or if you’re vehemently anti-Barchie, then this is probably not the fic for you. Please check the tags before reading for additional warnings.

Everything goes back to normal. Normal for Riverdale, anyway.

Cheryl Blossom rules the River Vixens with an iron first, Jughead comes back to Riverdale High. They all hang out in the student lounge, go to Pop’s on the weekends. They go to AP bio and musical rehearsals, movies and parties and things regular teenagers do.

Everything goes back to normal, but nothing is the same.

*

Even though Jug is back at school and ostensibly living in the same house as her, Betty somehow sees less of him now than when he was at Stonewall. He’s jubilant from their take down of the preppies to the point of mania, he spends long hours late at night writing instead of sleeping, skips down the hallway at school spouting ideas for his latest story, pulls her into the Blue & Gold offices for makeout sessions.

Sometimes Betty will be sitting next to him at lunch or at Pop’s and she’ll think, _you could’ve died_ , and she’s overwhelmed with a love so ferocious she wants to scream. She wants to hold him with every part of her body, crawl inside of him so she can feel the beat of his heart against her own, tie him up so he can never ever leave her.

But sometimes it makes her angry too. She wants to slap him, dig her nails into his skin, sink her teeth into his lips. How dare he almost leave her like that. She can’t do this without him, he’s the Ned Nickerson to her Nancy Drew, the Romeo to her Juliet, the Clyde to her Bonnie.

Sometimes he touches her and instead of melting into him she flinches instead. He doesn’t call her on it but she sees it, the way his eyes flicker, uncertainty flashing across his face. She doesn’t know why she does it, why the thing that used to be so natural for her feels foreign now, strange, different.

He’s so happy. He’s so happy and she doesn’t know what to do with it so she bakes cookies and goes running and smiles until her cheeks hurt and the whole time all she thinks is, _something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong_ , but she doesn’t know what.

*

Archie loves Veronica.

Really, he does. She’s beautiful, and kind hearted, and she knows things, all kinds of things that seem wonderous to him: what fork to start with at an expensive dinner, the right social manners for every situation, how to make problems go away with a wave of her credit card.

She was there for him when his dad got shot, when his dad died, she makes him feel special, good about himself. She cares about him, she loves him, she’s there for him when he needs her.

He loves Veronica, but something is different between them now, and he doesn’t know why. She’ll touch him sometimes, or try to initiate a hookup in the middle of the school day, and instead of being excited he feels annoyed instead, and then he feels stupid so he goes along with it, and Veronica is soft and smells good and knows all the things to do to turn him on in under five minutes and by then he always forgets about his initial hesitation anyway.

*

It starts with little things. Fingers brushing as they pass each other in the hallways, the brief touch of his hand against her back as he walks by her when she’s changing her books at her locker. Betty doesn’t know if Archie even realizes he’s doing it half the time - his fingers sliding across the back of her neck as he leans over her in the library, his shoulder nudging against hers when he sits down next to her at lunch.

When it happens she doesn’t react externally but she feels each touch like she’s been burned in the best way, heat that lights her up from the inside out. She walks around all day feeling like she’s glowing, imagining Archie’s fingerprints shining on her hip and her waist and her shoulder.

Betty and Archie don’t talk about the kiss, and they don’t talk about how they’ve started walking to school together again, and they don’t talk about how they always seem to find secret small ways to touch each other, and because they act like nothing’s going on everyone else does too. 

Of course, nothing is actually going on. They’re just friends, friends are allowed to touch each other. It’s not like they’re doing anything wrong. 

*

He starts getting obsessed with her ponytail.

Archie doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Betty’s been doing her hair like this for years, it’s not it’s there’s a novelty factor involved but lately he can’t stop watching it swing between her shoulder blades when she walks, soft blonde waves bouncing against pink sweaters and pastel striped tee shirts and floral dresses.

He thinks about touching it sometimes. Sticking his fingers through it, winding strands of hair around his hand and pulling, just to see what Betty would do.

There’s something about it, seeing Betty Cooper walk through the halls, perfect ponytail swinging, that makes Archie want to grab her by the hair and plunge his tongue into her mouth, pin her against the lockers and press his body against hers.

It’s not a crush. Crushes are sweet, crushes feel like falling into a good dream, like candy dissolving on his tongue. A crush is what Betty used to have on him, back when they were just kids, before anything bad had ever happened to them.

This is different. This is something physical, primal. Something itching constantly in his brain, something that’s set up residence in the back of his mind. He fucks Veronica every chance he gets, he runs for miles, he tries to sit at the kitchen table and study, but no matter what he does he can’t make it go away. 

*

Betty’s in gym class, wearing her ugly grey tee shirt and matching shorts, knee socks and sneakers, flinching at the sound the volleyball makes every time someone hits it, and the period is almost over so she just has to push through the last few minutes - 

And then she’s in the locker room standing in her underwear next to Veronica, who’s talking and Betty has no idea what she’s saying and she doesn’t remember getting here how did she get here what is happening to her -

“B.” Veronica reaches out and squeezes her wrist. “Are you okay?”

Betty finds her bag in her locker right where it’s supposed to be, digs out her cell phone and runs into a bathroom stall. She locks the door and leans her back against it, calls Charles and holds her phone to her ear, praying he picks up as it rings.

The line clicks on. “Betty? Are you okay?”

“It’s happening again,” she whispers.

“What is?” he asks sharply.

“I - I was in gym and then I was in the locker room and I - I don’t know what happened, I don’t remember how I got there” -

“How much time did you lose?”

“I don’t know, maybe a few minutes.”

He sighs into the phone. “It sounds like you dissociated.”

“What?”

“It’s a common reaction to trauma.”

Betty presses her hand against her forehead. “Should I be worried about it?”

A long pause. “Just keep an eye on it.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“No problem. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

She hangs up and lets out a long exhale. When she walks out of the stall Veronica is right there, still in her underwear, like she’s been standing there the whole time.

“Girl, are you okay?” Veronica cocks her hip, concern all over her face.

Betty gives her a bright, fake smile. “Yeah, I’m fine. I felt sick for a second but it passed.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” Betty lies. “I’m good.”

*

Archie’s walking to class when he sees Betty burst out of the girls locker room and go flying down the hallway, her shoes squeaking against the tile floor.

“Betty!” he calls out, but she keeps running, forcing him to jog to catch up with her. “Betty, stop!”

He catches her by the elbow and whirls her around to face him. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are glassy and with his hand around her arm he can feel the tension in her body. He pulls her into a little alcove where the water fountains are and leans her up against the wall.

“What’s wrong, what happened?” he asks.

She presses her lips together and shakes her head. Archie watches her shut her eyes and furrow her brow like she’s thinking for a moment before looking up at the ceiling, a stray tear rolling down her face.

“Betty,” he whispers.

She reaches up with a shaking hand and wipes her eyes. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I should go soon, the bell’s about to ring.”

“Betty, hey.” He puts his arms around her and Betty goes limp, head crashing into his shoulder as she crumples into him.

“Arch,” she breathes.

She’s shaking with her whole body and he tightens his arms around her. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”

Her whole body convulses with a choked sob and then Betty’s pulling away, eyes on the floor. “I really have to go.”

Archie lets her, watching that ponytail swing as she turns around the corner and disappears.

*

Betty goes over to Archie’s house on Saturday morning to help him with his history paper because he's still unbelievably behind in school. She doesn’t know why Veronica isn’t helping him and she doesn’t ask.

She sits at the kitchen table next to Archie and makes small talk with his mother while she pours them coffee before kissing the top of Archie’s head and promising to get out of their hair.

“Sorry,” Archie mutters when Mary leaves, like he’s embarrassed

“Oh come on, you know I love your mom.” Betty crosses her legs, she’s wearing a little cream and burgundy plaid skirt that hits halfway up her thighs.

She reads Archie’s first draft and circles with a red pen while she drinks coffee and he eats a bowl of cereal. When she’s finished reading she has Archie walk her through his thesis and they go over everything he needs to fix in his body paragraphs. Archie starts a second draft on his computer while Betty finishes her coffee and watches him type. There’s something about his hands she’s always liked, how strong they are, those dexterous fingers.

Archie rubs his forehead and gives her a crooked smile. “Sorry you’re spending your Saturday helping me with school.”

“Come on, you know I never mind helping you.”

He looks up from his computer and gives her the serious kind of look that makes her go very still. “You’ve always been like that. Thought I was worth helping.”

She leans forward a little. He’s sitting in a chair to her right, close but not close enough to touch. “You’ve always been worth helping, Archie.”

“Can I take a break?” he asks abruptly, looking away. 

“Sure.” She gets up and carries her mug over to the counter to pour another cup of coffee. 

She can feel her skirt riding up but instead of tugging it down she lets it be. She walks over to the fridge and helps herself to creamer, because she grew up in this house and knows where everything is, and doesn’t look back to see if Archie is watching her as she pours some into her coffee and carries her mug back to the table.

“Ready to keep going?” she asks.

Archie pouts. “That was barely two minutes!”

“The sooner you get going the sooner you’ll get done.” She takes a sip of coffee, licks her lips, and pretends that she doesn’t notice his eyes watching the path of her tongue. 

Archie shrugs in a way that looks too forced to be natural. “I’m not in a rush.”

“Oh.” Betty leans back, crosses and uncrosses her legs. “Okay. Yeah, me either.”

*

Archie keeps waiting for Veronica to notice something’s up with him but she’s constantly getting distracted by everything else in her life - her dad, her sister, school. He wonders if he should feel bad, at how easy it is to fool her with a smile, when she’s talking about the latest drama with her dad or colleges and his thoughts turn to Betty.

It’s not like he’s in love with her or anything. They haven’t kissed since that one time and that was just for show, that was planned. It didn’t mean anything. They’re just friends, friends touch, it’s not like they’re secretly having an affair or hooking up behind their friends’ backs.

They’re just friends.

They’re just friends.

*

Betty’s doing homework one night at Veronica’s with her, Archie and Jughead when Veronica’s parents come home from a benefit. The energy gets weird right away, Betty isn’t totally clear on what’s happening with Veronica’s dad these days but she knows it’s complicated and she, Archie and Jughead quickly pack up their stuff and hug Veronica goodbye, and get the hell out of the Pembrooke.

Jughead’s phone buzzes when they’re standing on the sidewalk outside the building, he pulls it out of his jacket pocket and reads a text. “Toni’s asking to borrow my history notes, she wants to know if I’ll swing by Thornhill and drop them off.”

It’s so mundane, history notes, so normal, that Betty almost laughs. “Okay.”

Jughead glances sideways at Archie and then back to her. “Will you be okay? Archie can walk you home, right?”

“Sure,” Archie says casually.

“Okay.” Jughead grabs Betty by the hips and kisses her, lips firm against hers, but instead of feeling nice it feels like a show, like he has something to prove.

“I love you,” he murmurs as he pulls away, and she feels like an asshole when she says it back.

She and Archie wait for him to put his helmet on and get on his bike, wave to him as he starts the engine and drives away. Archie turns and starts walking down the sidewalk and Betty rushes to keep up with him, hands gripping the straps of her backpack.

“Hey,” she says, annoyed. “Wait up.”

He slows down so she can catch up with him. “Sorry.”

He sounds irritated and she wonders if it’s about Jughead, that kiss, and then she feels ridiculous, self-centered, there are a million things that could be going on with Archie that have nothing to do with her.

They walk all the way back to her house without talking, the tension between them so thick Betty feels like she can’t breathe. She starts walking around the side of the house so she can go in through the back door and Archie follows her, leaning up against the wall next to the door when she stops to dig her keys out of her bag.

“I should go in,” she says softly.

Archie nods, still right next to her by the door. “Sure.”

“I’ll see you at school?”

His expression is dark, unreadable. “Yeah.”

Instead of going inside she drops her backpack down at her feet and leans against the wall next to him. “Archie.”

He looks away. “What, Betty?”

She can’t stop herself anymore, she shifts forward so she’s brushing against him and something inside Archie roars to life, before she knows what’s happening he has her pinned against the wall, her wrists in his hands, his thigh between her legs, their bellies pressed together.

She looks up at him, every cell in her body igniting like she’s on fire and Archie is watching her with heavy lidded eyes, his jaw slack. She settles her hands on his hips and Archie shudders, curling over her. He doesn’t kiss her but he rests his cheek against hers and Betty didn't know that not-kissing could be more erotic than making out but she can feel Archie hard in his jeans and the rise and fall of his chest against hers and she’s burning up, trembling legs barely holding her weight.

Archie groans, his thumbs pressing into her wrists. “Betty, we can’t.”

She pulls her hands out of his grip so she can slide them up underneath his sweatshirt. “I know.”

He shivers as she traces her fingers up his back. “Betty, seriously.”

She tilts her hips a little, just experimenting, and she feels it when Archie jerks against her in response. “We aren’t doing anything.”

“Betty, you’re killing me,” he breathes, and pushes his thigh a little harder against her.

“Five minutes,” she pleads. “Five minutes and I’ll go in.”

“Okay,” he exhales shakily. “Okay. Five minutes.”

They stand there like that, just breathing, bodies pressed together, not kissing but so close to it all it would take is the slightest tilt of their heads. Betty’s electrified, every nerve in her body firing, the constant background hum of panic she’s been so used to for so long has evaporated and it feels so good to feel good, she clutches the back of Archie’s sweatshirt and closes her eyes and just breathes.

After it’s definitely been more than five minutes Archie gently runs his hands down her sides and steps away. Betty bends down and picks up her backpack, her head is buzzing and she feels like she did that time she accidentally took too much Adderall, like her heart is beating out of her chest.

“See you in school,” she murmurs, unlocks the door, and slips inside before he can say anything back.

She walks through the kitchen and into the living room, where her Mom and FP are on the couch watching the news, as the front door opens and Jughead walks in, helmet dangling from his hand.

“Hey,” he says, smiling, and Betty feels so guilty she almost falls over. “How was your walk?”

“Fine,” she says, wondering if her voice sounds as high to him as it does to her. “You know. Boring.”

“Sure.” He walks over to her, waving a hand at her mom and FP, and pulls her to him with one arm around her waist. “Hey, are you feeling okay?”

“What?”

He presses the back of his hand against her forehead. “You’re kind of flushed.”

“I’m fine.” She steps away and gives him a tight smile. “I’m gonna go up and get ready for bed.”

*

“Are you okay?” Veronica pants out one night, when they’re in her bed and she’s naked under him as he kisses his way from her ribs down to her hips.

Archie sucks on the inside of her thigh. “What are you talking about?”

She reaches down and runs her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know, you’ve just seemed distracted lately.”

He scrapes his teeth against her just to feel her shiver and looks up at her, shining dark eyes and tousled hair. “I’m fine.”

She nods but doesn’t look convinced so he drags his tongue down as he reaches between her legs, and Veronica’s hips roll against the bed. “Archie.”

“Shh, relax.” He pushes her thighs apart, thumbs in the creases of her hips. “Everything’s fine, Ronnie.”

He goes down on her and doesn’t stop until he makes her come three times in a row, her hands tight in his hair and her thighs pressing against the sides of his head. He kisses up her body until he gets to her mouth and she’s still gasping for air, hands limply reaching in his direction. Archie pulls her into his side and she rolls into him with a laugh, her lips brushing against his chest.

“That was amazing,” she sighs, looking up at him with bright eyes and a big smile. “You’re amazing.”

He grabs her chin and kisses her so he doesn’t have to say anything back.

*

They’re at Pops one night and Betty is sitting next to Jughead but all she can focus on is Archie, sitting across from her in the booth with his arm over Veronica’s shoulders and his foot running up and down Betty’s leg under the table.

She drinks her milkshake, licks her lips and doesn’t look at Archie. Jughead is telling them about his latest story and Betty makes all the right sounds like she’s listening but really she’s focused on the toe of Archie’s shoe rubbing against her jeans.

“What do you think, Betty?” Jughead asks, turning in the booth to look right at her.

Betty is so overcome with guilt (what is wrong with her, playing footsie under the table with Archie instead of listening to her boyfriend?) that she leans forward and grabs his shirt to pull him in to kiss him. “I think you’re brilliant.”

He smiles and cups her cheeks, and kisses her back, and Betty feels so guilty she could drown in it.

*

He’s walking to the music room to practice when Betty pops up out of nowhere and pulls him up against the lockers. “What the hell are you doing?”

Archie stares down where her fingers are digging into the sleeve of his hoodie. “Uh… going to the music room?”

Betty looks like she wants to smack him. “Archie.”

“What?”

Betty bites her lip, lets go of his sleeve and reaches up to tighten her ponytail. “You can’t… you can’t just…”

He leans over her and Betty sucks in a breath. “I’m not doing anything,” he whispers.

Betty just stands there, looking up at him with big eyes. “Then why does it feel wrong?”

That hurts. “I feel wrong?”

Betty’s expression shuts down as she steps back from him. “Everything feels wrong.”

*

Jughead grabs her before AP History starts and pulls her into the Blue & Gold, locks the door and shoves her up against the wall. Betty goes willingly, drops her bag and lets him pin her wrists above her head. She trusts him, they’re good together physically and it’s a relief right now, to not have to communicate, to be able to turn her brain off and let him distract her.

His hands dig into her bare thighs and she gasps into his mouth as he kisses her. She grabs him by the neck and he growls and scrapes his teeth against her lip in response. She moans and his fingers tighten around her thighs, her head tilting to the side as he starts kissing her neck.

“I missed you,” he breathes into her skin. “Missed being able to do this whenever I wanted. No fucking dorm room, no goddamn preppies.”

 _No cameras_ , she thinks, her stomach tightening. _No Bret. No Donna._

She pushes him away with one hand against his chest. “I’m going to be late.”

“Betty” -

“I’ll see you at lunch.” She pulls him in for a quick kiss before ducking out of the Blue & Gold and rushes down the hallway before anyone can see him come out after her.

*

He’s coming back from a run one night when he sees Betty sitting on the top step of her house, head pressed to her knees, arms folded over her head.

“Hey!” Archie calls out. “Betty, you okay?”

When she doesn’t respond he jogs up the steps to sit next to her. “Betty, it’s Archie. Are you okay?”

She lifts her head up, revealing red eyes and tear streaked cheeks. “Hey,” she sniffs.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”

She shakes her head and wipes her eyes with the edge of her hand. “I’m fine.”

“Betty, you’re crying.”

“I’m okay. It’s just…” Betty breaks off and presses the back of her hand against her mouth. “I thought I’d be happy, you know? We won. We pulled it off. I should be happy, but I’m… why aren’t I happy? What’s wrong with me?”

She looks at him with big teary eyes like a lost little girl, and he carefully places his hand between her shoulder blades. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

She closes her eyes and tears slide down her face. “Then why aren't I happy?” Betty starts to sob. “I’m so messed up, Arch, everyone else is happy and I, everything just feels bad, like, all of the time, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me, there’s something wrong with me, Archie” -

“Betty, stop.” He wraps his arm around her shoulders and she curls into him, pressing her face into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” she cries. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” He tightens his grip on her shoulder and wraps his other arm around her back. “It’s okay.”

She makes a choking sound as she inhales, her hands clutching onto the fabric of his sweaty tee shirt. Archie doesn’t know what to do so he just holds her, and after a while Betty stops crying, her damp cheek hot under his touch when he runs his thumbs under her eyes to help her wipe away her tears.

“Betty.” He takes a deep breath. “Have you talked to Jug about any of this?”

Her eyes go dark as she looks away. “I don’t know how to talk to him anymore.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added a few new tags, if for some reason you haven’t looked at them yet PLEASE PLEASE read them before you read this chapter. This isn’t a happy, romantic/shippy kind of fic so if that isn’t your thing feel free to nope out.

Betty is ready when she meets Jughead in the Blue & Gold Monday morning before home room. She has coffee, she has muffins, she has a speech she’s been practicing all weekend. She’s as prepared for this as she is for any test she’s ever taken.

She is going to be a good girlfriend and she is going to tell him what she’s feeling and they are going to fix it and for the rest of her life she’s going to do her best to forget that she ever almost dry humped Archie Andrews next to her back door in a moment of what was clearly temporary insanity. 

She’s not a cheater. Cheaters are bad and selfish people and Betty’s just a teenage girl who once stood over her boyfriend’s unconscious body holding a bloody rock, wondering if she killed him. She’s not a bad person. She’s not.

If someone’s parents are bad does that mean their children will automatically be bad too? Is she doomed in that sense, is evil stamped into her DNA somehow? Her genes would point to yes, and the fact that so many people actually believed or even seriously considered that she killed Jughead when he was ‘dead’ counts for something, right? 

Maybe it’s not even her fault. Maybe she’s just a product of junk genes and bad parenting hidden behind a pretty face and a shiny ponytail. Maybe she never even had a chance to be anything else.

His face lights up when he comes in and sees the spread in front of him, which only amplifies her guilt. “What’s all this?”

She’s supposed to be ready, she studied for this moment, she wrote a speech and memorized it and practiced it in the mirror, and now that the moment is here she’s choking.

_You almost died,_ she thinks. _You almost died_.

“Betty?” He sounds uncertain as he crosses the room to her.

“I just wanted to do something nice for you,” she blurts out. “I feel like we’ve barely seen each other lately and I know I’ve been kind of…”

He picks up one of the coffee cups as he raises an eyebrow. “Distracted?”

Guilt makes her stomach turn sour. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey. You don’t have to apologize for anything.” He puts his hand on the back of her neck and she forces herself to hold very still. You can kill someone like that, if you know how. 

Normal, nice girls with boyfriends who love them aren’t supposed to think about things like that. They aren’t supposed to think about bloody rocks and dead bodies and all the ways a person could die.

Good people don’t have thoughts like that.

“I just feel like things were so crazy and I’m still adjusting to having five seconds of normalcy and I don’t know if I’m handling it that great,” she babbles. “I guess I’ve gotten so used to everything being a shitstorm all the time that now that things are actually kind of normal right now I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Betts.” His hand is on her wrist, where blood pumps through her veins and does he ever think about it, his girlfriend standing above his head holding a rock?

“I’m sorry, I should go, I’m gonna be late.”

“Hey, hey.” He uses the hand on her wrist to reel her in, and kisses her neck. “You didn’t even eat a muffin.”

Somehow Betty finds it within herself to giggle. “Guess I’ll just have to eat later.”

*

Archie’s walking to precalc when Betty approaches him from the opposite direction, grabs his elbow and pulls him into an empty classroom.

“I have precalc in five,” he tells her.

“I only need two.” Betty is rigid, back unnaturally straight, arms crossed over her chest. “This needs to stop.”

“What needs to stop?” he asks, like an idiot.

Betty’s lips press together. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“But - we’re - we’re not doing anything,” he says weakly.

They’re not. They’re not, right? Okay yeah, things got a little out of control that night behind her house and sure, maybe he’s been flirting with her a little which he guesses isn’t cool, but it’s not like they’re actually cheating on Jughead and Veronica together, they aren’t kissing or secretly hanging out. They aren’t doing anything wrong, really wrong. Right?

“We have to stop,” Betty reiterates. “It’s wrong.”

“Being your friend is wrong?”

“You’re not acting like my friend,” she spits out. “You’re acting like” -

“Like what?” he challenges. “The guy that’s always around when you need someone?”

“I don't want to hurt anyone,” she says stiffly.

“Neither do I.”

“Then we’re in agreement.”

“About what?” he asks, a little bewildered.

“The, the touching and the flirting, it’s got to stop. I’m with Jughead, you’re with Veronica” -

“I know that!”

“Well, it’s wrong!”

Archie fights against a wave of lightheadedness, like he’s going to fall down. “Then why doesn’t it feel wrong?”

The corners of Betty’s mouth pull down, like she’s trying not to cry. “It doesn’t matter how we feel.”

*

For a few days Betty tries, she really does. She reads Jug’s latest story and showers him with praise, she holds his hand in the hallway, she looks away whenever she passes Archie at school. She wears pastels and does her hair in a perfect ponytail each morning and pretends that she’s just a normal girl with a boyfriend and it works, for a little while. 

But sometimes she’ll be trying to fall asleep, or sitting through an AP bio lecture, or shopping with Veronica, and it’ll flash through her mind, the image of standing there over his body with the rock, and she feels so sick she’s sure she’s about to vomit. 

She calls Charles after dinner one night, locked in the bathroom with the water running so everyone thinks she’s taking a shower. 

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asks when he answers the phone.

“Betty, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious,” she says in a thin voice. “You know who my dad was” -

“You aren’t your father Betty” -

“I thought I almost killed my boyfriend!” she whisper-hisses. “Do you know what that feels like, to not know if you’re capable of doing the most abhorrent thing you could ever imagine?”

“You didn’t though,” he reminds her.

“But I could have! Even if I’d never want to hurt him, there’s a part of me, this dark part that takes over sometimes and when it does I… I don’t even know what it could make me do.”

“That sounds scary,” he says gently. “To not feel like you can trust yourself.”

She rubs her eyes and leans against the side of the tub. “Yeah,” she whispers. “It is.”

*

Archie tries to take Veronica out on a date and she cancels on him three times in a row. The excuses keep changing but they’re always vague, she has to do something about her sister, her dad, school, the neverending fucking rum business she’s trying to launch. He loses track of all her reasons for delaying their date, finds himself zoning out and not really listening as soon as she starts talking about things like branding and business relaunching and customer demographics.

The worst part is the realization that he doesn’t care, isn’t hurt or angry or even annoyed at her. Veronica’s busy, so what, that isn’t anything new. They still see each other in school, still find ways to have hot, sweaty rendezvous that keep them satisfied.

So he doesn’t care when she keeps blowing him off, doesn’t care that his girlfriend is too busy to let her boyfriend take her out to dinner.

That’s kind of the entire problem though. _Shouldn’t_ he care?

*

Betty’s sitting in a booth at Pop’s across from Jughead doing homework but she can’t focus because every time she looks at him she thinks _you almost died_ and in her mind she’s right back there in the woods, standing over his body holding a rock, and even though she knows she didn’t do it, she wasn’t the one who smashed it over his head, it could’ve been her she could’ve done it she’s the daughter of the Black Hood she has violence in her blood and she killed the cat and what if it had been her what if she had been the one do it what if she had killed him how is she supposed to live like this knowing she’s got this dangerous dark thing inside her -

“I have to go to the bathroom, be back in a minute.”

She slides out of the booth and rushes to the bathroom without looking back at him, goes into a stall and falls to her knees. She gags but nothing comes up because she hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast, because when she sits at lunch with Jughead all she can think is _you almost died_ and how can she eat when she’s thinking about murder? 

She drags herself over to the sinks and splashes a little cold water over her face. She stares into the mirror at her reflection and the eyes of a killer stare back at her.

“I’m losing my mind,” she whispers to herself.

She goes back to the diner and watches him studying in their booth, head bent over his work. She stares at his vulnerable neck, the slope of his shoulders, a dark lock of hair curling around the edge of his beanie.

She could’ve killed him. 

When she slides into the booth he looks up at her with a huge smile that cuts her like a knife. “Okay?” he asks.

“I want to take a break,” she announces, the words rushing out of her mouth completely unplanned.

“Yeah, sure, okay.” He shuts his book and slides it into his messenger bag. “Milkshakes to go?”

She feels like she’s falling even though she’s sitting down, now that the words are out of her mouth she can’t put them back, it’s like standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff and surrendering to the inevitability of going over. “No, Jug, I meant a break from us.”

He stares at her blankly, like he doesn’t understand. “What?”

“You almost died,” she whispers.

His forehead wrinkles. “Yeah, I know.”

“Jug, you almost died, and I could’ve killed you!”

His eyes widen as he reaches for his messenger bag. “Maybe we should go talk outside.”

Betty follows him out to the parking lot, her hands curled into fists and her nails pressing against her palms because this way she can’t hurt him she can’t use her hands to hit or choke or pick up a rock -

“Betty!” His hands come to her shoulders and she wonders how many times he’s just said her name before she heard him. “Talk to me, please. What’s going on? Why would you say something like that?”

She wants to look away but she forces herself not to because she deserves this, she deserves to see exactly how much damage her words can do. “Because it’s true.”

“Betty, no one thinks that you actually” -

“Yes they did! I’m the daughter of the Black Hood Jug, I don’t think it’s exactly a stretch for people to imagine that I’m like him!”

“But you aren’t!” he insists. “Betty, I know you. You’d never do something like that.”

“Do you?” she challenges. “Because I thought about it, I mean, I really thought about whether I did it. Archie and Veronica thought about it. Our best friends thought that I” -

“Hey, hey.” He wraps his arms around her, tight tight tight. “You would never hurt me.”

Betty buries her face in his shoulder. “You can’t say that for sure.”

“Yes I can,” he argues.

“Maybe you only see what you want to see,” she whispers.

His arms drop and she’s cold cold cold. “Maybe _you’re_ the one who can’t see clearly right now.”

“Maybe,” she agrees, her throat tightening up like she’s going to cry.”

“You love me,” he says shakily.

“I do,” she promises tearfully.

His arms are rigid by his side. “But you don’t want to be with me.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“So uncomplicate it,” he snaps.

“I thought you were… what if I did it?”

“Okay, one, I’m not dead, so if we could stop focusing on that it would be fantastic, and two, you didn’t do anything! You were set up!”

“But I could have! I could have hurt you!”

“But you didn’t!”

“Well maybe I’m not willing to risk it!”

He stares at her. “Betty. Come on. I know you don’t want to hurt me.”

She shakes her head frantically. “Never.”

Pain flashes across his face. “Well you’re doing a pretty shitty job of it right now.”

“I’m sorry.” She starts to cry, turning her head to the side, like she’s an embarrassed little kid. “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore because all I see is him” -

“You aren’t him,” he says roughly.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” she cries, curling in on herself. “Never sleeping and, and plotting break-in and planting bugs and solving murders and spying on people and god, we let ourselves get _arrested!_ I know it’s over but it feels like this, all this _shit_ that’s happened since we got together, I can’t do it anymore!”

His eyes go soft. “Betty.”

“I tried everything! Running and baking fucking cookies and trying to be a good girlfriend and crying in the bathroom because nothing makes me feel good anymore, I feel like I’m drowning Jug, like I can’t relax for one second because any minutes I could hurt someone or someone else could get hurt and I’m just so tired, I’m tired of it and I’m trying, I promise I’m trying but nothing helps, nothing makes it better and I can’t do this to you, we just got you back and I’m a mess” -

“Okay, okay.” His arms come back around her, softer this time. “If this is what you need…”

“I’m sorry,” she sobs. “I’m just so messed up Jug, and I can’t deal with it and school and trying to be a good girlfriend and I understand if you hate me” -

“I don’t hate you,” he says thickly. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she cries. “I really, really do, I just - I can’t do this anymore. Not right now.”

His whole body goes tight. “Betty… if this is what you need right now…”

“I’m not saying forever,” she says quickly. “Just - just a breather. Get some space from each other.”

“Space,” he repeats bitterly.

“It… could be good,” she says tentatively. “Take some time on our own to process everything?”

“Is this about what happened between you and Archie?”

She stumbles back out of his arms. “Have you even been listening to me?”

His jaw twitches. “Tell me this has nothing to do with Archie, and I swear, I’ll believe you.”

“I feel like I’m drowning!” she shouts. “I'm falling apart and you want to talk about Archie?”

He yanks her forward to plant a rough kiss on her hairline before he rubs his eyes. “Fine. Fine. If this is what you need to figure this shit out, then fine. A breather, a break, whatever you want. Consider us not currently together.”

“Jug.” Betty crosses her arms over her face and sobs. She knows she doesn’t deserve his sympathy, doesn’t deserve anything, but it hurts, nonetheless.

Everything hurts these days.

He waits with her, standing three feet apart with his eyes on the pavement, while she calls Veronica and blubbers through asking for a ride. He stays with her until Veronica shows up, even carries her bag for her and shuts her door once she’s in the passenger seat.

Veronica gapes at her. “What the hell is going on?”

Betty swipes angrily at her wet face. “Just drive.”

*

Veronica intercepts Archie as soon as he walks through the school doors in the morning and he can tell by the look on her face that it’s not to have a quick and dirty romp in the music room.

“We have an emergency,” she says in a rush as she drags him down the hallway by his wrist. “Betty and Jughead broke up last night” -

“ _What?_ ”

“I picked her up from Pop’s and she slept over and the only thing she said the entire night was, we’re taking a break, and then as soon as we got here today she booked it and she’s not answering any of my texts.”

“Wait.” Archie stops walking. “They broke up or they went on a break?”

“I don’t know Archie, this isn’t a freaking Friends episode! Our two besties just had their hearts broken and I can’t find Betty so if you could just be helpful and assist me in tracking her down before she does something lovesick and stupid, that would be great.”

“Ronnie,” he murmurs.

“Sorry. This whole thing has me kind of freaked.” Veronica blinks rapidly. “I just wasn’t expecting any of it.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“Look, can we divide and conquer? I’ll take all the ladies bathrooms, the locker room and the gym, you take the music room and the library and then we’ll go from there?”

What is he supposed to say, _actually, Ronnie, Betty’s been avoiding me ever since that night I pinned her against the back of her house and almost kissed her and flirted with her at Pop’s right in front of you because I’m a piece of shit whose unexpected newfound obsession with all things Betty Cooper is fucking up everything?_

Please. Even to him it sounds crazy.

Veronica smacks her lips against his. “Thank you, you’re the best! Text me if you find her!”

She dashes off and he doesn’t even bother checking out her legs in that short skirt as she jogs down the hallway, because ever since Betty told him they had to stop - what, exactly? - there’s been a cold pit in his stomach he just can’t shake.

It’s just a hunch, but he can’t really imagine Betty seeking solace in the music room so he takes the stairs up to the library and enters through the glass doors. It’s quiet and musty, somewhere he almost never goes and feels out of place walking through in his letterman jacket, eyes scanning between the stacks for a blonde ponytail or a pink sweater or delicate hands curled up into fists.

He has to walk all the way to the back of the library before he finds her tucked into a little alcove that’s barely wide enough for her to sit the way she is, with her knees pulled into her chest and her arms crossed over her head, like she’s trying to make herself as small as possible. He pulls out his phone and texts Veronica before making his way over to her and quietly sitting down on the floor across from her.

“Hey, Betty,” he says softly. “It’s Archie.”

She lifts her head and to his surprise she isn’t crying. Rather, she looks completely out of it, her skin is milky pale and her eyes are bloodshot and under them are bruised looking circles, like she was up all night.

“Veronica told you,” she says hoarsely.

“Yeah.”

Betty nods, picks at the knee of her jeans. “I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, I get that,” he says carefully. “But I have to ask you - was it because of me?”

Betty huffs and rolls her eyes at him. “I’m becoming aware that apparently not everyone knows this, but not everything is about you, Archie.”

He tries not to take that personally because he knows she’s hurting. “Then why?”

Betty’s fingers go _pick pick pick_ and when he grabs them and gathers them up in his hands before she can rip a hole in her jeans she looks away vaguely over his shoulder. “It just didn’t feel right anymore.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to reiterate that this fic is gonna be an angst-fest and none of your favorite ships are safe, so for your own good please make sure you’ve read the tags.

Archie walks her to first period but Betty spends the rest of the morning sitting outside on the bleachers. It hurts to breathe, she sits there huddled in her bomber jacket, legs freezing in her denim skirt, thinking _you stupid, stupid, fuckup._

She could’ve had everything, she could’ve had her boyfriend and Yale and senior year with her friends. She could’ve been happy.

She was supposed to be happy.

She spends lunch hiding in the girls bathroom, head in her hands. She wonders if everyone knows now, if all of her friends hate her. The idea weirdly doesn’t upset her as much as she thought it would.

None of them can hate her as much as she hates herself.

Veronica finds her sitting on the floor of the locker room after the final bell has rung, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around her thighs. “Get up,” Veronica commands.

Betty looks up at her. “I’m tired, V.”

“And I don’t give a shit. _Get. Your ass. Up._ ”

Betty starts to cry. “I messed up so bad, V.”

Veronica sighs and crouches down in front of her. “Come on, I’ll buy you a milkshake and we can talk about it. Let’s just get off this nasty floor, okay?”

Betty cries harder. “Okay.”

“Jesus, Betty.” Veronica hauls her to her feet and makes her hold wet paper towels under her eyes for a minute before they leave school and go to Pop’s.

“Okay,” Veronica says, when they’re sitting across from each other in a booth. “Tell me what happened. Lay it on me.”

Betty stares down at her strawberry milkshake. “It’s bad, V.”

Veronica dips a pinkie into the whip cream topping of her double chocolate shake and sucks it off her finger. “Come on, Betty. I watched you almost boil Chuck Clayton alive, I don’t think there’s anything you could say at this point that would shock me.”

Betty thinks about how it would feel to pick up her milkshake and hurl it across the room. “I told him I wanted to take a break.”

Veronica stops with her mouth halfway to her straw. “Why?”

Betty squirms in her seat. “I don’t know, I wasn’t planning on doing it. It just slipped out.”

“Well obviously some part of you meant it or you never would’ve said it.”

“I guess,” Betty agrees reluctantly.

“Betty…” Veronica runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t get it. I thought… I thought the two of you were happy together.”

“I… we love each other,” Betty tries to explain. “It’s not like I just stopped caring about him. But… Veronica, I can’t even remember the last time I was actually happy. Our relationship was waking up early to make a train so we could see each other before school in the mornings and days without touching each other and, investigating people and solving crimes, and I don’t remember how to be someone’s girlfriend when no one is spying on us or trying to _murder_ us” -

Veronica holds one hand up. “Okay, okay, I get it, can we please not talk about murder right now?”

Betty’s eyes fill with fresh tears. “I don’t know how to pretend that none of it happened anymore. We saw Cheryl’s dad shoot Jason in the _head_. My dad is a _serial_ killer. Your dad had Archie framed for murder, remember _that?_ A bunch of entitled preppie assholes tried to murder my boyfriend and framed me for it, how the hell am I supposed to care about my grades and baking cookies and all the things that normal teenage girls are supposed to care about?”

“I was there for all of that, remember?” Veronica hisses. “I saw the same video on that computer. My dad might not be a serial killer and even though he might be sick right now I speak the truth when I say that he is an absolute monster. I helped you cover up what happened that night in the woods, I lied and did everything you asked me to do, I got _arrested_ for you. And you don’t see me blowing up all of my relationships! Life is shit sometimes, okay? You get up in the morning and you handle it one day at a time and you keep moving and you don’t stop, you just keep going so you don’t think about any of that stuff, because if you stop for long enough to think about” -

Veronica suddenly drops her head into her hands, hiding her face, and goes silent.

Betty swirls her straw through her milkshake. “V? Are you okay?”

When Veronica lifts her head again she’s crying. “I’m sorry. I’m just stressed out about my dad, and stupid Hermosa, and things with me and Archie have been kind of weird lately and I guess I always counted on you and Jughead being this solid thing, and I was kinda hoping we were going to get a break from the drama for a while, you know?”

Betty sits there, her stomach hot with guilt, and watches Veronica wipe her eyes with a napkin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were so stressed out.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.” Veronica laughs bitterly. “I thought you had enough on your plate already.”

“I guess neither of us have been good about talking about our feelings,” Betty hedges.

Veronica gives her a sad smile. “I don’t want us to be the kind of friends who don’t talk about real things with each other. I don’t want it to take a literal crime for us to be able to bond.”

“Me either,” Betty agrees. “You’re my best friend.”

“You’re _my_ best friend. Goddamnit, now I’m the one who can’t stop crying!” Veronica wipes her eyes again. 

“It’s okay,” Betty tells her. “I won’t tell anyone.”

*

“Do you ever think about the video?” Veronica asks Archie, her head on his chest as they lay on his couch watching a movie, fully clothed because his mother is in the kitchen.

His fingers trail up and down her arm. He loves her skin, how warm and soft it is. “What video?”

“Jason Blossom,” she whispers.

Archie stiffens underneath her, and not in a fun way. “What made you think of that?”

“Betty.”

He stares down at her but Veronica is looking resolutely at the tv. “Huh?”

“She brought it up earlier when we were dissecting her and Jughead’s break from being in a romantic relationship.”

So a break, not a breakup.

“I don’t know why you guys would talk about that.” He doesn’t ever think about that video, he has it locked away in a box in his head that he never, ever opens.

He has too many memories of gunshots as it is.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird, though?” Veronica’s voice is so soft he can hardly hear her. “That we never really talked about it?”

“I don’t really see what there is to talk about,” he mutters.

“Archie.” The slight shake in her voice makes him glance back down at her but she’s still watching the movie. “We watched” -

“I know what we watched.”

She pushes up on her hands a little, so she’s hovering over him. “Why are you getting mad?”

“I’m not mad,” he says carefully. “I just don’t get why you’re bringing that up.”

Veronica sighs and comes back down so she’s lying half on top of him. “Because Betty may have made an admittedly fair point about something.”

“What does watching that video have to do with her and Jughead going on a break or whatever?”

“Do you think everything that happened to us… do you think it warped us?”

“If you’re asking if I think we’re messed up from everything that happened to us, I mean… yeah, Ronnie, I guess so.”

“Archie… you don’t think part of why we got together was some kind of way for us to sublimate our fear into hot, passionate sex and romance as a coping mechanism for all the violence we’ve experienced at a tender age, do you?”

“I honestly don’t understand half of what you just said,” he admits. “But I know I love you. I don’t really feel like I need to analyze why, I guess.”

Veronica kisses his chest, right over his heart. “I love you, too.”

*

“Okay lady,” Veronica says to Betty the next day, intercepting at her locker. “No spending lunch period crying in the bathroom this time, let’s go.”

“No, Veronica,” Betty starts, but the other girl latches on to Betty’s hand and starts to pull her down the hallway.

“Look, I get it, or, I think I do anyway,” Veronica says. “All the bad shit we’ve been through in the past two years caught up to you and now you’re freaking out, no one’s holding that against you. But what you are not going to do is self isolate and refuse to let your friends help you, okay?”

Betty wonders if Veronica would still want to help her if Veronica knew her boyfriend pinned her best friend to a wall and spent five minutes with his body pressed up against hers, doing nothing but breathing heavily and staring at Betty like he wanted to devour her. “Maybe I don’t deserve your help.”

“Now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself.” Veronica pulls Betty around the corner towards the cafeteria. “And being ridiculous to boot.”

Betty feels like everyone is staring at her when she walks into the cafeteria but Veronica ushers her through the lunch line like a bodyguard and marches her over to their table, where Archie and Kevin are eating. Jughead isn’t there, Betty doesn’t see him anywhere actually, and she feels a rush of relief mixed with guilt, that he’s avoiding lunch because of her.

“Hey,” Archie says to them, his eyes darting between the two of them as she and Veronica sit down.

“Hi Archiekins,” Veronica leans across the table to kiss him and Betty quickly looks away.

*

He finally gets Veronica to take a night off from dealing with her family bullshit and her rum business so he can take her out. He picks her up in his truck after she’s eaten dinner with her parents and drives them out near Sweetwater River, parks in a dirt clearing behind some trees, and pulls out a picnic basket from under his seat.

“Oh Archie, you didn’t!” Veronica squeals, and gives him a sloppy kiss on the cheek as she throws her arms around him.

He spreads a blanket out over the bed of the truck and he and Veronica climb up, stretching out on their backs. He opens the picnic basket, he packed strawberries, a batch of chocolate chip cookies his mom baked earlier, and sparkling cider.

“How romantic,” Veronica says with a smile, taking the cookie he hands her and breaking it in half so they can share.

It makes him proud, to see her smile at him like this, like he did something right. He feels so uncertain about himself sometimes, desperately wants love and adoration but isn’t sure he always deserves it. He tries to be good, the kind of man his dad raised him to be, but some days it seems like he just can’t do it.

He isn’t his dad, he isn’t a man yet, not really, he’s a teenage guy who lost his virginity to his teacher and watched Jason Blossom get shot in the head by his own father, and he’s seen _his_ father shot, bleeding, he’s seen Betty stand in front of him with clenched fists and tears dripping down her face so many times he’s lost count, seen Jughead get abandoned over and over again by his parents, held a sobbing Veronica in his arms, he’s seen boys get beaten and bruised and abused and he doesn’t know what to do with it, all that violence and pain. He doesn’t know how to transmute it into peace, he doesn’t know how to change things for the better in a way that really matters. He knows how to fight, how to use his fists and his body to protect the people he loves and he doesn’t know what kind of man that makes him.

He knows that wasn’t the kind of man his father would’ve wanted him to grow up to be.

“Hey.” Veronica rolls over on one side and nudges his shoulder. “Where’d you go?”

“Sorry, hey, I’m okay.” He slips one arm under her shoulder and lifts his other one so he can point up to the sky. “Look.”

“Nice night for stars,” she murmurs.

“My dad tried to teach me the constellations when I was a kid,” he tells her. “Not that I was interested back then. I just wanted to run around with sticks and build forts.”

“Mm.” She kisses his neck.

“He knew all about that stuff. How to find the North Star, the Big Dipper. Orion’s Belt.”

Veronica kisses a little lower. “Yeah?”

“It feels like another lifetime ago.”

“It kind of was.” She bites the neckline of his shirt and tugs it down with her teeth, but instead of getting turned on he feels annoyed.

“What are you doing?” he asks her.

“Uh, a little thing called foreplay?” Veronica rolls her eyes.

“Why does everything always have to be about sex?” he asks, because she _rolled her eyes_ at him like he’s stupid for asking a question, for not just assuming they’d automatically hookup, like it never occurred to her that he might actually want to spend quality time just hanging out together. 

She sits up, eyes flashing. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just, I’m trying to talk to you about something and you’re not even listening.”

“So you don’t want to have sex with me? Me, your extremely hot girlfriend who loves you and appreciates everything you did to give me a romantic evening?” She says it quietly, like he’s hurt her feelings, but there’s something about her tone of voice that sounds dangerous too.

He’s afraid suddenly, not of her, but of answering wrongly. He’s a teenage guy, he knows what he’s supposed to want. His whole life has been guided like that, going along with what his parents and football coaches expected of him. He’s the good son, the good teammate. Or at least, he was, before he became the guy who slept with his teacher because she made him feel special and she was beautiful and so what if he was too young to technically consent, she wanted him and he was a hormonal teenage guy, of course he wanted her back.

He wanted it. He knows he wanted it. 

That’s what counts, right?

Right?

Veronica is still fuming next to him and he’s hit by a bolt of fear, that he’s really messed up, made her think he isn’t attracted to her, doesn’t want to be with her. He doesn’t know how to use his words like Betty to explain a concept, or tell a story like Jughead, or cut someone to shreds in one sentence like Veronica.

That’s why he fell in love with songwriting. It was the first time he felt like he had a real way of explaining his feelings.

But he’s never been very good at using his words to explain how he feels when he could use his body instead.

He flips over so Veronica is flat on her back with his body balanced over hers, and she gives him a sly smile that barely covers up the relief in her eyes. “Now that’s more like it.”

He kisses her, loses himself in her lips and her soft thighs as he shoves up the skirt of her dress. She wraps her arms around him and starts to moan, and Archie gets that feeling he’s only had with her, like he’s glowing inside, like he’s do anything to make her want to hold him like this, say his name like that, shake and whimper and beg for more when his fingers are inside her.

Like she wants him, like he’s special, like he’s being given something precious, the chance to kiss and touch the holiest of places. Like he’s worthy.

They fuck hard and fast, Veronica flat on her back with her knees pressed tight against his sides, hands in his hair, arching her back and crying out into the dark night when she comes and it doesn’t take him long to follow, shuddering with his whole body as he presses his face into the side of her neck.

They clean up without talking to each other and get back into the front of the truck, Archie starts the engine and glances sideways at Veronica, who’s combing her hair with her fingers.

“I think you should probably take me home now,” she says softly, looking out the window. “I have to finish a history paper.”

He puts her hand on her thigh and takes it away when he feels her shift away from his touch, subtle but not subtle enough to miss. “Okay.”

He does a three point turn and steers back onto the road, and he and Veronica don’t talk to each other the entire way back to The Pembrooke.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same song, different verse: read the tags, read the tags, for my sake and yours, please read the tags.

Kevin invites Betty, Veronica and Archie over to his house Friday night to hang out and watch a movie. Betty goes home with Veronica after school to avoid running into Jughead before going over to Kevin’s. They’ve done a good job of staying out of each other’s way at home but it’s still awkward, trying to plan around each other so they don’t get stuck in the same room together if they can help it.

Veronica treats Betty with unprecedented gentleness, she gives Betty a cream-beige cashmere sweater to borrow and does her makeup for her, and Betty’s stomach churns with guilt through it all.

She’s a bad friend. She knows she’s a bad friend, because good friends don’t flirt with their friend’s boyfriend and they don’t lie to them, good friends don’t fantasize about what it would feel like to make out with their friend’s boyfriend.

Good friends don’t take generosity they don’t deserve, good friends don’t lie.

But what is she supposed to do, tell Veronica that Archie almost cheated on her with Betty one night, that they both wanted it and the only thing stopping them was Archie’s last shred of self-control?

Please. Veronica would probably stab Betty in the eye with her mascara wand and set the whole Pembrooke on fire.

And Archie would never forgive her.

It’s one thing for them to secretly flirt, to press their bodies against a wall and push their newfound sexual tension as far as they can, but it’s an entirely different thing to deliberately tell Veronica something that will blow up her relationship with her boyfriend.

Archie picks them up from The Pembrooke and drives them over to Kevin’s. Veronica sits in between Betty and Archie in the front of the truck and Betty genuinely questions her sanity for agreeing to do this, when really she should be locked in her room at home on her knees, atoning for all her sins.

Kevin greets them all cheerfully when they get there, slinging his arm around Betty’s shoulders and kissing her cheek, which only makes her feel worse. She knows she doesn’t deserve any sympathy, she’s the one who spontaneously put her relationship with Jughead on hold, she’s brought this upon herself.

Archie doesn’t look at her the whole time Kevin leads them through the house to the den to put on a movie. Betty pretends that she doesn’t notice, like she couldn’t care less that watching him hold Veronica’s hand and pull her into her lap when they sit on the couch cuts like a knife. Betty sits on the other side of the couch with Kevin and lets him put his arm around her. Things have never really been the same between them ever since last year but he’s one of her oldest friends, and Betty doesn’t have many of those left. 

It’s not really like she’s in a place to judge anymore, anyway. They’ve all done bad things, they’ve all lied and schemed and hurt people. They’ve all made mistakes. Betty isn’t better than any of her friends, she’s screwed up just as much as everyone else. She stood in the woods and claimed her father’s nom de guerre just to watch Donna Sweet shake in her designer boots, she put herself in danger for the sake of uncovering the truth over and over again. 

She broke her boyfriend's heart in a parking lot.

Betty doesn’t pay attention to the movie, she watches Archie’s fingers trail up and down Veronica’s arm out of the corner of her eye and even though she’s sitting on a couch with three other people she feels so lonely it hurts down to her bones.

Leaving after the movie is a relief, sitting still for two hours being tortured by Archie and Veronica’s PDA only a few feet away felt like a kind of penance she didn’t want to pay. They all hug Kevin goodby when they leave and Betty wordlessly follows Archie and Veronica back to Archie’s truck.

They drive back to The Pembrooke with the radio turned up high, and she doesn’t know if Archie’s just in the mood for music or if he’s playing it so none of them have to talk. When they get to Veronica’s he gets out of the truck with her and Betty waits while he walks Veronica to the front doors of The Pembrooke. They talk for a few minutes and then they kiss goodnight, and Archie waits for her to go inside before loping back to the trunk and pulling himself into the driver's seat.

He puts his seatbelt on and stares straight ahead. “I love Veronica.”

He says it heavily, not cruelly, like it’s a confession. Betty doesn’t really know how to respond to that so she doesn’t say anything. 

“I love Veronica,” he repeats, almost like he’s trying to convince himself.

“I know you do,” she says softly.

Archie sighs, shifts into drive and turns the truck around. He drives them back through town all the way to their street without saying another word so Betty doesn’t either, she sits next to him and that’s enough to relieve some of the tension in her body, to be physically in the same space as him without anyone else. It reminds her of when they were younger, when they were just Archie and Betty, the boy and girl next door, before Jason Blossom dying and gang wars and the Lodges coming to town and The Black Hood.

She never really got to mourn it, that stage of her life coming to an end. How was she supposed to know back then, sophomore year, how bad things were going to get? Back when the worst thing she could ever imagine happening was getting rejected by Archie.

When they get home Archie parks on the street, turns the car off and looks sideways at Betty, whose entire body lights up like a Christmas tree just from the way his eyes scan over her. They both undo their seatbelts but neither of them move to get out of the car. Betty’s heart is racing, like she’s doing something illicit, as if after everything she’s done in the past few years this is somehow worse than all of it, like she’s expecting Jughead to see her out here with Archie and flip out at them, all his suspicions confirmed.

Like sitting in a car with her best friend from childhood is a crime and maybe that’s the problem, that it feels wrong, which means deep down maybe it is, but right now Betty can’t make herself care. Maybe she’s just selfish, maybe she’s as crazy and narcissistic as her father was but she can’t help it, the only times she doesn’t feel absolutely awful are these little stolen moments with Archie, even if she’s overwhelmed with sickening guilt about it later.

Because when it’s happening, when she has this feeling, like it’s just her and him and the rest of the world has fallen away, as if being next to him like this has the power to rewind time, take her back to a place when she felt safe and loved, every horrific murder and near miss and violent act faded to the background of her mind, hidden for the moment if not gone. She feels like she’d do anything right now, just to hang onto this feeling for as long as she can.

She can’t help it. She just can’t stop herself, as much as she’s been trying to fight it there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to. That part wants to give into these feelings even if it leaves scorched earth in their wake, even if it means losing all their friends, even if it destroys her in the end.

She just can’t stop.

Archie looks at her again. “Five minutes?”

They aren’t touching, they aren’t doing anything but sitting together in his car. There’s nothing wrong with that, she reassures herself. Being alone with Archie like this is the first time all week that she’s really felt safe, alive, more than a self-hating shell of her former self. She’d sit in a car with him for longer than that, she’d sit here all night if it meant feeling like this, like she’s not alone, like he’s right with her even if they aren’t actually doing anything other than sharing space.

It’s not like he’s asking to hook up, he’s not even leaning towards her. But that’s okay, she doesn’t need that, as much as she might secretly want it. She just needs him in the truck next to her, breathing the same air, knowing that some part of him must feel the way she does, for him to ask if she’ll sit in the car with him for five minutes just to be in her presence a little longer.

“Okay,” she agrees. “Five minutes.”

*

Archie doesn’t see Betty for the rest of the weekend but when he walks out the door on Monday morning to head to school there she is, sitting on the bottom porch step in her pink corduroy skirt and a white tee shirt under a jean jacket, hair perfectly ponytailed like always, backpack sitting next to her on the steps. She doesn’t wave, doesn’t greet him, just puts on her backpack and comes down to the sidewalk to start walking with him.

“Where’s Jug?” he asks, and then immediately feels like an asshole for bringing it up.

“Took his bike in early,” she responds. “I think he’s working on a story.”

“How’s that going? Living in the same house with your ex?”

“He’s not my ex! He can’t be my ex-boyfriend if we didn’t officially break up. He’s my… I don't know what he is.”

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I was just wondering. It’s gotta be awkward for you guys.”

When he looks at her Betty’s staring down at her feet as she walks and he realizes that there are circles under her eyes, more space than usual between her thighs, her hands jammed in the pockets of her jacket like she can hide the way they’re shaking from him. He reaches out to brush her elbow and she jerks with her whole body, eyes going wide as she whips her head up and to the side to stare at him and god, when did the beautiful, sweet girl he used to wave to from his bedroom window turn into someone who trembles from the slightest touch, who walks like she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders?

“Hey,” he says softly. “Are you okay?”

She clicks her tongue impatiently. “I’m so far past not okay I don’t even know what to call it.”

“Betty.” Her name comes out sounding helpless, which is exactly how he feels.

Betty’s eyes darken. “Do you ever think about that night?”

“What night?”

“ _Archie_.”

“I thought you didn’t… I thought you didn’t want us to…” His tongue trips over the words.

He thought she didn’t want to go there with him, she's the one who explicitly told him they had to cool it, he assumed that night, the sexual attraction that feels like it came out of nowhere and won’t fucking leave him alone, the flirting, all of it, was something they had both silently chalked up to temporary insanity and left it at that.

She sighs, her shoulders still a little hunched. “I don’t think I know what I want.”

*

She comes home from Veronica’s Tuesday night and Jughead is alone in the living room on the couch with a bunch of papers spread out in front of him. His beanie is lying on the coffee table next to his laptop and his hair looks like he’s been repeatedly running his fingers through it.

“Hey,” she mumbles, dropping her backpack on the floor and hanging up her jacket.

He glances up briefly at her before going back to his papers. “Hey.”

She knows she should leave him be but she can’t help it, she’s curious. He has that look on his face, the one he gets when he’s so deep in a story he can’t see the way out. “Everything okay?”

He makes a frustrated sound and gestures at the papers around him. “I can’t figure this out.”

She walks slowly into the living room, hovers at the edge of the couch. “I could take a look,” she offers.

She’s half-expecting him to tell her to fuck off but he sighs and leans back against the couch, gathers up the papers, and holds them out. “Please.”

She starts rifling through them, the familiar sensation of adrenaline flooding her body as she realizes he’s given her an unsolved murder to look at - police reports, witness statements, background on all the suspects, pages of his own notes in handwriting so familiar it hurts a little to read it. She doesn't ask him why he’s doing this, she doesn’t need to. It’s like an addiction, solving crimes. It gets under the skin, burrows into the brain, relentlessly demanding attention. And like all addictions, it’s hard to kick.

After about twenty minutes of reading she hands everything back to him. “It was the gardener.”

He gapes at her and starts flipping through the pages. “Oh my god. I didn’t even… how did you do that?”

Betty shrugs. “Guess detective work is like riding a bicycle.”

He nods, scribbling on a piece of paper, already lost in the story again. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” Betty gets up and pretends it doesn’t bug her that he doesn’t look at her again. “I’m going to bed.”

He nods his head, chewing on the end of his pen. “Okay. Thanks again. Seriously.”

“You’re welcome.”

She can’t stand this, the way he’s being so carefully polite, shutting her out by retreating into his head and an unsolved murder even though she knows it’s what she deserves. She trudges up to her room in the dark, gently shuts the door so she doesn’t wake up FP and her mom, and glances out her window.

Archie’s blinds are closed.

*

Archie’s in the music room with Veronica during a free period, the blinds down and the door locked from the inside, a desk shoved under the knob. He’s sitting in a chair and she’s straddling him, her cream and navy blue checked skirt hiked up so he can palm his hands over her ass. His eyes are closed as he kisses down her neck and Veronica’s rolling her hips into his. Her skin is soft and he slides his tongue under the collar of her sweater just to feel the contrast in texture, and Veronica is whispering his name, _Archie, Archie, Archie_ and he’s turned on, really turned on, because she’s clutching onto him, she wants him and that’s all he wants, to be wanted, to be seen as special by someone, craves adoration and then -

And then he’s sixteen again and warm hands are moving over his to guide them to touch the way she likes and he’s so eager and nervous and wants to please, can’t believe she’s letting him touch her somewhere he’s only fantasized about and Ms. Grundy is whispering _Archie, Archie, Archie,_ and he’s prouder than he was when he scored his first touchdown, got his first ever B on a test, because nothing compares to this, a grown woman saying his name in ecstasy, didn’t know it was possible to feel this good and deep down there’s a scared little part of him that knows there’s something not right about this but he’s so turned on and she’s so beautiful and she wants him and she chose him and he can’t stop because then he won’t be special anymore -

Archie tears his lips from Veronica’s skin and throws himself back so hard the chair skids against the floor. Veronica shrieks and plants her hands on his shoulders, jumping off his lap before he can tip them over. He’s out of the chair in two seconds, stumbling blindly towards the door and small hands are pulling in his shirt and he flinches, suddenly feeling repulsed by the idea of anyone touching him.

“Archie!” Veronica doesn’t give up, she stomps around him and grabs him by the face before he can duck away. “Hey, look at me, what the hell just happened?”

“I don’t know,” he grits out. “I don’t… I’m sorry, I don’t feel good, it just sort of hit me out of nowhere.”

Her expression instantly shifts into concern and he forces himself not to pull away as she places the back of her hand against his forehead. “Do you want to go to the nurse?”

He shakes his head, that’s the last thing he wants, to be stuck in a small room. “I just need some fresh air for a few minutes, I’m gonna go sit out on the bleachers I think. I’ll meet you in bio?”

He can tell by the look on her face that she’s hurt he didn’t ask her to come with him but she takes it with grace, nodding and going up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Okay. I’ll see you there?”

“Yeah,” he reassures her, and hurries out of the music room.

He stumbles down the hallway towards the back door that leads to the field, barely seeing anything in front of him. He feels like he’s still being touched even though he’s alone, a weird slithering sensation under his skin that makes him want to get into a shower and scrub and scrub and nothing makes sense right now, he doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, why everything is colliding inside his head and he doesn’t even realize someone is calling his name until a hand grabs him by the forearm and he recoils like he’s about to get hit.

“Arch.” It’s Betty, standing in front of him with those big green eyes he’s never been able to hide from. “What’s wrong?”

His chest is getting tight, like he’s running out of air, even though he knows he’s breathing. “I need to go outside,” he chokes out.

“Okay,” she says simply. “Let’s go.”

Betty hustles him down the hallway and out the school doors, follows him across the field and over to the bleachers. He sinks down on the bottom one and Betty sits next to him, not touching but close enough for him to reach out to her if he wanted to. He digs the toes of his sneakers into the grass, presses his hands against the sides of his head and tries to even out his breathing while Betty patiently sits next to him, demanding nothing. 

Because that’s Betty. All she ever asked of him was to love her the way she loved him, and he couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t even really wrap his brain around it back then, perfect golden girl Betty Cooper with Archie Andrews, the boy who could barely read, who always came second to Chuck or Jason in football, the boy who could never keep up with her kind of intelligence and wit. She deserved so much better than him.

He’s a guy who let an older woman seduce him because that’s how badly he wanted to feel like he was good enough, and maybe deep down that’s all he thought he deserved, not the girl next door who seemed like something out of a dream with her pink sweaters and shining blonde hair and her innocence.

Archie couldn’t handle it, her, back then, like that. He would’ve ruined her, tainted the perfect girl next door who was going places, was going to get out of Riverdale and do amazing things with her life. He never thought he’d be able to give her that, the kind of life she deserved, the things she needed. So he didn’t even try.

Eventually he drops his hands, a hollow pit in his stomach. “I think I really loved her.”

“Veronica?” Betty asks, her voice careful and restrained.

He shakes his head. “Grundy.”

Beth goes very still, like he’s invoked a curse or something by saying her name. “Arch,” she whispers.

“We were so young,” he says thickly. “I was so young.”

“Archie.” Betty’s voice is shaking a little. “We were kids. She was the adult. What happened, whatever you think you felt, it was her responsibility to draw a boundary. She was your teacher. She was supposed to protect you and she didn’t. Nothing that happened between you was your fault.”

“I said yes,” he says quietly. “I always said yes.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Betty says firmly. “You were a minor. By definition you couldn’t consent. She knew that. She was young and pretty and you were a teenage guy. She knew it was wrong Archie, she had to know that. She took” -

“Don’t,” he interrupts roughly. “I can’t - just, please don’t say that. I know, just. Please.”

“Okay,” Betty pacifies. “Okay.”

“I wanted her to want me,” he confesses. “It made me feel good.”

“Of course it did. She was… she groomed you, Archie. She made you feel special. She made you feel close to her. She made you feel like you could trust her.”

He swallows back a lump in his throat, suddenly terrified he’s going to start crying. “I know all that but it doesn’t… I still wanted her. I wanted her to love me.”

Hurt flashes across Betty’s face before she composes herself. “ _I_ loved you.”

“I didn’t deserve you,” he whispers. “You loving me… that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me and I couldn’t see it. All I saw was you - perfect Betty Cooper. You were so much better than me, Betty. You deserved a hell of a lot more than some idiot who was fucking his teacher and thought that was love.”

Betty’s eyes blaze. “I _never_ thought that about you. And that girl, that idea you had of who I was then... that’s not me, Archie. I’m not that girl anymore.”

“I know,” Archie replies. “I’m not that guy anymore either.”

She sighs and leans close enough to bump her shoulder lightly against his, but instead of making his skin crawl it’s comforting, like getting wrapped in a warm blanket. “I know.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am again, imploring you to please read the tags.

Betty gets called down for dinner Thursday night and when she comes downstairs Archie and his mom are sitting in the living room with FP and her mom, drinking fucking _tea,_ and it’s so surreal that Betty skids to a stop, socks slipping a little on the hardwood as she stares at Archie and then her mom.

“What’s going on?” Betty asks.

“The Andrews came over for dinner,” her mother answers brightly, as if that’s a normal thing they do.

It used to be, a million years ago, when she and Archie were kids. They had backyard barbecues and back to school dinners, birthday parties, block parties in the summer where all the kids rode their bikes in the streets and played with water balloons while their parents cooked hot dogs and drank bottles of beer.

Betty can’t remember the last time her and Archie’s parents (their mothers, Betty mentally corrects herself, because she and Archie don’t have fathers anymore) sat down for a meal together.

“Where’s Veronica?” Betty asks, at the same time Archie asks, “Where’s Jughead and JB?”

“Her dad had a doctor’s appointment,” Archie says.

“Jug’s at the library, my boy has a lot of schoolwork to catch up on. And Jellybean’s at a sleepover, the little punk is finally starting to make some friends,” FP says affectionately.

Her mother leads them into the dining room, where there’s a roasted chicken on the table, baked potatoes, a huge spinach salad. Betty floats around the room over to her chair and sits down across from Archie, his mother to his left, Betty’s mom and FP sitting at each end of the table. 

“Isn’t this nice?” Betty’s mom subtly pushes the salad bowl in Betty’s direction. “When was the last time we all did this?”

Betty sits there and silently serves herself salad, wondering what the deal is with her Mom’s stepford wife impression.

Maybe Betty’s not being fair through. Aside from the whole videotape situation everything in Riverdale is as quiet as it’s been in years, her mom is living with a man she loves, maybe she’s just happy.

Their parents make small talk while FP serves the chicken and the baked potatoes get passed around. Betty reaches for one but her mother whisper-hisses her name and Betty drops her hands into her lap like she’s been burned. God forbid after everything she’s been through she dares to eat a carbohydrate, she thinks bitterly, and stabs at her salad with her fork. Archie frowns and Betty shakes her head at him before he can say something about it.

Neither of them talk much during dinner, letting their parents carry the conversation and occasionally answering direct questions in as few words as possible. Betty picks at her salad and chicken, wondering if it’s possible to actually die of awkwardness. Across the table Archie’s shoveling his food into his mouth, which Betty must admit is a pretty good strategy to avoid having to talk. It’s borderline painful, sitting here acting like everything is fine, and Betty wonders for the first time how much Jug told his dad about them.

It’s pretty obvious she and Jughead have been avoiding each other but her mom hasn’t said anything to her about it. FP hasn’t started treating her any differently, he’s friendly but relatively uninvolved in her comings and goings, doesn’t pretend that he’s a stand-in for her father. She knows he cares about her in some vague familial way but she also knows he’d choose his son over her every time, which leads her to believe Jughead hasn’t mentioned their break to him, the same way she hasn’t said anything about it to her mother.

Besides, they’ve spent the whole week basically ignoring each other, maybe their parents have decided to step back and let them work out whatever they think is going on between them on their own.

When dinner is over her mother makes a pot of coffee and pours a cup for herself before she offers one to Mary, who accepts, and Betty just sits there as it happens, too stunned by this entire dinner to visibly react. She barely hears her mother ask if she and Archie wouldn’t mind clearing the table and he has to answer for her. FP wanders off to the living room to join their mothers and Betty and Archie get up to start picking up the dishes.

They make a few trips back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen in silence. Once they’ve cleared everything Betty washes her hands at the kitchen sink and glances sideways at Archie, who’s standing by the counter next to the stack of dishes.

“I’ll rinse, you load?” she asks him. 

“Sure.” Archie walked around her to open the dishwasher and bends down to pull out the lower rack.

Betty turns the water on and grabs a sponge, picks up the first plate and gets to work. When she turns to her right to pass it to him he’s already there with his hands outstretched to take it and she swiftly whirls back around to grab another plate so she doesn’t have to watch the perfect fluidity of movement that is Archie Andrews in motion.

They get into an easy rhythm, maybe it’s just all those years of living side by side but it’s always been easy for her and Archie to move in sync. She’s grateful that he isn’t talking, she’s still blindsided by dinner and all she can think about every time she looks at him is sitting in his truck the other night, not touching, just looking at each other for exactly five minutes before she whispered, _Goodnight,_ and slipped out of the car.

When they’re finished Betty points to where the box of dishwasher gel pods are stored under the sink and he pops one in and gets the dishwasher going while she washes off her hands and grabs a dish towel to dry them off. As soon as she puts it back down on the counter Archie moves behind her and all her muscles lock up as she feels the heat of his body. His arms move around her to spread his hands out on the counter, his front plastered to her back and her ass and the only thing that keeps her knees from giving out in shock are her fingers, gripping the edge of the sink so hard her knuckles turn white.

“What - what are you doing?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” he groans. He sounds agonized. “I can’t… I can’t stop.”

“Stop what?” she murmurs. 

He presses his nose into her hair. “Wanting you.”

His words make her shake all over. “Arch… our parents are in the other room.”

He makes a pained noise. “I know.”

“Archie, we can’t,” she bites out. It’s taking all of her self control to not push back against him, the weight of his body draped over hers so overwhelming she can barely think straight.

“I know.” He inhales like he’s smelling her hair.

“You’re still with Veronica.”

“I _know_.”

Betty shuts her eyes and lets her head tip back until it’s resting against his shoulder. “Then what are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” His voice shakes. “When I see you I just… I’m sorry. Fuck. I just. I can’t make it _stop_.”

“But you’re still with Veronica.”

He doesn’t answer her but his hands slide across the counter and pull her fingers out of her death grip on the kitchen sink. He starts to rub them, his pointer finger and thumb gently massaging over her fingers and palms and she has to swallow a moan, every point of contact makes fire rush through her veins.

“Are - are you going to break up?” she breathes.

Archie shudders against her. “I don’t know.”

“We can’t… Veronica would never… she'd never forgive us.”

“I don’t know what to do.” His hands are so warm as they cradle hers. “I… I love her, Betty.”

“So you love her but you want me?” She doesn’t move away but she can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“Don’t you… want me too?” He sounds unsure for the first time.

Betty weaves her fingers through his. “What I want doesn’t matter.”

He disentangles their fingers but only so he can wrap his arms around her. “That’s not true.”

Betty feels like she might cry. She can’t remember the last time someone held her this tightly, like she could totally fall apart and still be okay. “I’m not… I’m not a good person, Archie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve already… hurt Jughead. I can’t… I can’t do that to Veronica too. It’s not… it’s not fair…”

“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothes. “What’s not fair?”

“They’ve been through… so much” -

“So have you” -

“But I’m the only one falling apart,” she whimpers. “I don’t… I’m really losing it, Arch. I don’t even know why anyone would want me right now.”

He makes a sound like a growl in the back of his throat. “I want you.”

She swallows back a lump in her throat. “Why couldn’t you want me back then?”

It’s not fair to ask that, they were only fifteen, but after all this time it still stings when she thinks about it, being rejected by the boy who proposed to her in the second grade.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I can’t… I can’t change anything I did back then.”

“I know. I just… I don’t understand what’s happening to me,” she sniffs.

“I know,” he whispers. “I feel like that way too.”

“What are we going to do?” she asks tremulously. “No matter what we do someone’s going to get hurt.”

“I know,” he says gravely. “I know.”

*

They’re halfway to school the next morning when Betty blurts out, without any warning, “I think we should tell them.”

Archie trips over his own feet and gapes at her as he catches his balance. “What?”

Betty rapidly blinks those big green eyes like she’s gonna cry as she stops on the sidewalk next to him. “I can’t keep doing this anymore.”

“Doing what?” he asks incredulously.

“Lying to them.”

“We’re not… it’s not _lying_.”

“Yes it is,” she insists. “Maybe by omission, but it’s still a lie, Archie. We’re liars.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m… this is killing me, Archie.”

“And you think telling them is going to help?” he yells.

She flinches and his stomach tightens with guilt. “At least I wouldn’t feel like I was lying all the time!” Betty retorts.

“She’ll break up with me! Do you seriously think Veronica would not care about this? If you tell them she’ll dump me!”

“So it’s better to lie to her and pretend that you don’t want to fuck her best friend?” 

Archie feels like she just socked him in the gut. “That’s not - that’s not what this is.”

She blinks up at him and purses her lips. “So you don’t want to fuck me?”

He stares at her, he’s never heard Betty speak like this before. “I don’t think you really want me to answer that.”

“I know you do. I see the way you look at me.” Her voice is confident and a little mean, like she’s taunting him.

It’s kind of hot.

“I… it’s not just…” Archie fumbles to explain. “it’s not just a physical thing okay, you’ve been my best friend for like over a decade, I can’t separate out how I feel about you and how my… body feels about you.”

“But you still love Veronica,” she says sardonically.

“Betty, please, this isn’t just your decision. This affects both of us, it’s not just your life we’re talking about here! Don’t I even get a say in this?”

“I’m just wondering,” she says, every word sharp and pointed. “Is this really the way you think you should treat someone that you keep saying you love so much? Do you honestly think Veronica deserves this? After everything she’s been through?”

“I - I can’t control how I feel!”

“No, but you can control your actions, and the longer this goes on the more this is going to hurt her in the long run and you know it!”

“Did you break up with Jughead for me?” he asks. “Is that why you want me to tell Veronica about us?”

All of the color drains out of her face. “Fuck you, Archie.” She spins on her heel and starts to stomp away.

“Betty! Betty, come on!”

When she whirls around her cheeks are pink. “Don’t talk to me!”

She turns back around and Archie is forced to follow her all the way to school in silence, sick to his stomach.

*

She finds Jughead in the Blue and Gold before homeroom, typing up a paper. Betty shuts the door and quietly flips the lock, turns around and clears her throat.

“Hey.” Her voice is already shaking. “Do you have a minute?”

He looks up warily at her. “What’s up?”

Betty curls her fingers into her palms and crosses her arms behind her back so he can’t see. “I need to tell you something.”

He pushes his chair away from the desk but he doesn't get up. “Okay.”

She swallows and presses her nails into her palms as hard as she can. “When we… when I asked to go on a break… there was something I should’ve told you and I didn’t, and it’s been eating away at me ever since and you’re probably going to hate me but I can’t pretend it didn’t happen anymore.”

Jughead locks his jaw. “What?”

“I… I meant what I said, that you and me… it’s not about Archie, okay? But there was… something happened. Between me and him.”

His eyes blaze. “You hooked up with Archie while we were together?!”

“No! We didn’t, we didn’t _do_ anything, we just… we had a moment.”

“A moment,” he says dully.

“We… nothing actually happened.”

“Did you kiss him?” he asks harshly.

Betty’s bottom lip trembles. “No.”

“Did you want to?”

Her eyes fill with tears, all she can manage to do is barely shake her head in acknowledgment. His eyes slam shut for a moment and when he opens them they’re flat, all the life gone out of them.

“Do you feel better now?” he asks bitterly.

A few tears roll down her cheeks. “No.”

He slouches over in his chair. “Me either.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

He’s staring down at the floor. “Just get out.”

“Jug” -

“I said leave me alone!” 

She jumps at the angry tone in his voice and fumbles with the knob on the door. She lets it slam behind her as she walks out, and rushes down the hallway so she can go to the bathroom and wash the blood off her palms before homeroom starts.

*

When Archie gets to the music room Veronica’s already waiting for him, standing with her arms across her chest and her lips pressed together.

“Hey.” He shuts the door behind him and sets his backpack down on the floor. “What’s up, what did you want to talk about?”

Veronica’s eyes narrow at him. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

He freezes. “Tell me what?”

“About your and Betty’s little _moment?_ ”

The room begins to spin around him. “What?”

“What were you planning on doing?” Veronica asks scathingly. “Lead me along for the rest of senior year like you didn’t almost kiss my best friend?”

“I - Betty told you that?”

“No.” Veronica looks furious. “ _Jughead_ did. Apparently Betty confessed to her sins in a fit of guilt, which is more than I can say about you.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out, numb with shock. 

“Oh, you’re _sorry?_ Really? That’s the best you can do?”

“I love you.” He feels dazed, like he’s been hit in the head. “I swear, Veronica, nothing actually happened between me and Betty.”

“Really?” Her sarcasm is cutting. “You love me?”

“Of course I do! You and me… what happened between me and Betty has nothing to do with us!”

“Are you delusional?” she shrieks. “You almost hooking up with my best friend definitely has something to do with us! I have been nothing but loyal, there is no reason for something to be happening with you and Betty unless you have feelings for her!”

“I don’t know what I feel!” he shouts. “I’m in love with you but I also love her because she’s been my best friend since we were _four_ , okay, that history just doesn’t go away! But that doesn’t change the fact that I love you, and the fact that I love you doesn’t change the fact that I’m always going to feel something for Betty because she’s the first girl I ever loved and this is all really fucking confusing!”

“No shit!” Veronica shouts back.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks. “It just… it just happened.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose for a second. “And is that the only time something like that has ever happened?”

Archie’s heart slams against his chest. “Ronnie...”

“Oh my god.” Veronica rolls her eyes up towards the ceiling. “Oh my _god_.”

“I never meant to hurt you,” he says lamely.

“Oh, spare me,” she hisses. “I’ll put up with a lot of shit but I’ll be damned if I let my boyfriend and my best friend humiliate and disrespect me like this!”

She starts to stomp past him and he catches her by the wrist. “Veronica, please.” 

“Don’t touch me!” Veronica wrenches her arm out of his grip. “You don’t get to touch me right now.”

“It was my fault, okay, don’t be mad at Betty, I initiated it” -

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She stares at him in disbelief. “Knowing that the two of you were conspiring to keep this from me?”

“We didn’t want to hurt you,” he says thickly.

She gives him a glare so cold it burns. “Well, you failed.”

She walks out of the room, leaving him alone to sink into a chair and bury his head in his hands as he feels his world fall apart around him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags, tags, tags.

Betty’s phone buzzes when she’s at her locker after the last bell has rung, packing up her stuff. Her heart beats a little faster at the sight of Archie’s name on the screen, they’ve been avoiding each other since they got to school - well really, everyone’s been avoiding each other, Betty realizes, she's barely seen Veronica at all today. She swipes at the screen to read the texts and the beating of her heart quickens so much she can hear the blood rushing in her ears as his words materialize in front of her eyes.

_You told Jughead??_  
_He told Veronica everything._  
_Pretty sure she broke up with me and she probably hates you too._  
_Are you happy now? Was it worth it?_

She makes it to the front doors before she breaks down in tears, hurrying down the front lawn of school with her head down and one hand shielding her face so no one can see her cry. She gets to the sidewalk as a red car pulls up to the curb with a screech and Betty stumbles back.

“Get in loser!” Cheryl calls out.

Betty stares at her cousin, tears dripping down her cheeks as she sniffs and rubs at her eyes. “What?”

Cheryl rolls her eyes as she leans sideways to open the passenger door from the inside. “Not in the mood for movie references, got it. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. Unless you don’t want to go home…”

“Home is fine,” Betty murmurs as she gets into the car.

She shuts the door and Cheryl squeals away from the curb before Betty can get her seatbelt on. “Please don’t tell me you’re crying over a boy. I’ll admit, Jughead has grown on me since this series of unfortunate events that has been the last three years of our lives started, but he isn’t worth your tears.”

Betty leans back in her seat and covers her eyes with one hand. “That’s my sort of boyfriend you’re talking about.”

“Sort of?”

“We’re taking a break.”

“Oh, you mean because you’ve been cheating on him with Archie?” Cheryl asks brightly. “I heard the most salacious rumor today that you and Archie have been having a torrid love affair right under Jughead and Veronica’s noses!”

“It’s not like that,” Betty mumbles.

Cheryl accelerates through a yellow light instead of braking. “So what’s it like?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this a ‘the flames of an old crush reigniting’ situation or a ‘want to hop on Archie’s dick’ situation?”

“Cheryl!”

“What?” Cheryl asks innocently. 

“I don’t know… both I guess,” Betty admits, her cheeks hot with shame.

Cheryl glances sideways at her, looking surprised. “Okay then,” she says firmly. “If what you want is the boy next door who you wasted years of your life pining after because no offense, Archie isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box and it took him _way_ too long to realize how hot and awesome you are, then get it girl. After all the shit we’ve been through we all deserve to be happy.”

“Yeah, well we blew up two relationships so I wouldn’t say anyone’s happy right now.”

“So you were outed.”

“I told Jughead and he told Veronica. Who broke up with Archie, apparently.”

“Good for her,” Cheryl says approvingly. “So how bad was it that you couldn’t deal with the guilt?”

“What?”

“I mean, did you blow him, did you fuck Archie in your room with Jughead down the hall, how crazy was it?”

Betty thinks about Archie pinning her against the exterior of her house, the sink, how all he has to do is be next to her for her body to feel like she’s having the most intense sexual experience of her life, which she doesn’t even want to to try to analyze because it makes no sense. “We didn’t even kiss.”

Cheryl bursts into laughter. “What?”

“It’s not funny!”

“Oh my god!” Cheryl howls.

She slows down and pulls over to the shoulder to park, and puts on her hazards. “Did you seriously tell Jughead that you cheated on him when you and Archie didn’t even kiss? I mean, I always thought you were kind of a prude but Betty, come on, what’s the worst thing you could have done that’s not even kissing?”

Betty’s eyes well up with tears. “I wanted to kiss him. If he had kissed me, I would’ve kissed him back.”

“Have you and Archie kissed since the fake kiss you planned ever so elegantly, not to mention surely seeded subconscious doubts in Veronica and Jughead?”

“No,” Betty sniffs.

“So if you didn’t break up with Jughead because you were secretly banging his best friend, then why’d you do it?”

Betty wipes her eyes with the edge of her hand. “I don’t know. I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Do what?”

“Be his girlfriend. Act happy. Pretend like everything is okay. I don’t know. It was exhausting. I’m exhausted.”

“Do you want to be Archie’s girlfriend?”

“No. I don’t know. I… sometimes I just want everything to go back to the way it used to be, before all this _shit_ happened.”

“Back when you were in love with Archie?” Cheryl points out.

“He’s my best friend.” Her voice breaks. “I‘m not _in_ love with Archie, but I never stopped loving him.”

“Did Jughead know that?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t like… it wasn’t like he was second best. I never thought… I had my chance with Archie and he didn’t want me. I… it felt good to be with someone who wanted me. Who was like me. We always understood each other. I’d never really had that before. I felt like someone really understood me. It was always just… easy. I loved Jughead. I loved him so much. I still love him.”

Cheryl tilts her head. “So when did it stop being easy?”

Betty thinks about video tapes of her fucking her boyfriend, standing in the woods in front of a fire in her underwear, men jumping out of windows. “I don’t know.”

Cheryl sighs and pats Betty’s knee. “Come on, let’s stop at Pop’s and get milkshakes before I drop you off.”

Betty ends up leaving Archie on read and doesn’t text him back.

*

Archie’s eating spaghetti at the table with his mom that night when his phone starts ringing. He’s so surprised to see Veronica’s face on the screen that he almost drops his phone as he picks it up and pushes back from his chair to stand up.

“It’s Veronica,” he explains to his mom, who smiles and nods in permission as he leaves the table.

He rushes down the hallway towards the living room as he answers and holds the phone to his ear. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Veronica’s voice is scratchy, like she’s been crying. “I’ve been thinking about how we left things earlier at school and… do you want to come over and talk?”

“Yeah.” He slumps against the wall in relief. “I’m just finishing up dinner with my mom, I can be over in about forty-five minutes.”

“Okay. Text me when you’re here, please,” she says in a weird, formal tone of voice, and hangs up.

He stares down at his phone, his heart pounding in his chest. He wasn’t expecting her to reach out so soon, he thought she’d need more time to cool down.

Maybe it isn’t over.

He goes back to the table but as soon as he sits down he realizes he’s too wired to finish eating so he starts clearing his dishes.

“Everything okay honey?” his mom asks.

“Yeah, everything’s fine Mom. I’m um, I’m gonna drive over to The Pembrooke and see Veronica.”

“How’s she doing? I feel like she hasn’t been over here in ages.”

“She’s fine, Mom.”

“How’s her dad doing? She must be so worried, poor thing.”

_Poor thing._

He swallows hard, feeling like he might throw up. What kind of guy fantasizes about hooking up with his girlfriend’s best friend while said girlfriend’s father might be dying? 

“I don’t know, I’ll ask her.” Archie gives his mom a tight smile and goes to get the car keys.

*

Jughead isn’t home for dinner that night. FP says something offhanded about him working late at the library again, which Betty is almost sure is bullshit, it’s much more likely he’s at Pop’s or the bunker. She cuts up her salmon with her fork and mashes it up with the tines while her mom and FP listen to JB explain the science project she’s working on because Betty’s sure that if she eats something she’ll be sick.

Jughead hates her. Veronica hates her. Archie hates her. And it’s all her fault. None of this would’ve happened if she’d shut Archie down from the start, if she’d gone inside that night instead of lingering by the back door and giving into the pull of his body, _just five minutes_ , and now those five minutes have destroyed the three most important relationships she has.

“Betty?” Her mother’s voice is soft but Betty can still pick out the underlying tension in it. “Eat your vegetables.”

Betty stares down at her broccoli. “I’m not hungry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her mother sighs. “They’re good for you.”

“I have a stomachache,” Betty mumbles.

“Since when?”

“Mom, really, I don’t feel good, can I be excused?”

Her mom’s lips twist to the side but she nods, reaching out to press the back of her hand to Betty’s forehead. “Okay, sweetheart.”

“Thanks.” Betty clears her plate on the way out of the kitchen and escapes upstairs to her room.

She shuts the door and locks it before doubling over, hands on her thighs, so nauseous she almost gags as she makes her way down to the floor. She curls up in a little ball and breathes shallowly, eyes shut as hot tears slip down her face and roll across her nose. She can feel her heart racing in her chest and she’s hot and cold at the same time, vaguely aware that she’s starting to hyperventilate but she can’t stop, she can’t control it, because all she can focus on is the fact that she ruined everything.

She’s a bad person.

Good people don’t hurt everyone around them, they don’t break hearts like it means nothing. All she wanted to do was be honest, she thought if she told Jughead the truth she would feel better. She wasn’t expecting him to absolve her but she wasn’t trying to hurt him either, even though she knew it would, because it had to be better hearing the truth directly from her, right? She thought she was doing the right thing. 

She always wanted to do the right thing. But didn’t her father think he was doing the right thing, when he killed all those people? The right thing is relative to an individual’s moral compass, how else to explain why he did it? He thought he was doing what was right, _necessary_ , even if it meant hurting people.

Maybe that’s really the problem. Maybe she’s like him.

The thought makes her so upset that she lifts her left hand up and punches it into the wall. She doesn’t feel anything for a few seconds but then the pain sets in and she opens her mouth in a silent scream as she pulls her hand into her chest. She rolls over onto her stomach and presses her forehead to the floor as she begins to sob, left hand cradled in her right.

It hurts, it hurts so much, and there’s no one to blame but herself.

*

When Archie gets to the Pembrooke he parks on the street, turns the engine off and texts Veronica. She texts him back and tells him she’s coming down instead of inviting him up.

That can’t be a good sign.

He gets out of his truck and locks it, walks around to the sidewalk and waits outside the building, hands stuffed into the pockets of his hoodie, nervously shifting his weight back and forth. A few minutes later Veronica comes outside, dressed down in a pair of dark skinny jeans and a black turtleneck, her hair pinned back from her face with an oversized pearl-studded hair clip.

“Hey,” she says tightly.

“Hey,” he says back cautiously.

“Thanks for coming over.” She still hasn’t looked him in the eye.

“Sure.” He stands there awkwardly, unsure what to do.

“I’ve been thinking all day, since…” Veronica sighs and tilts her head back. “I’m trying to find some way to understand this. If there’s some way you and I…”

Archie’s heart leaps into his throat. “You mean… you’re not breaking up with me?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she says stiffly. “I feel like I’m going to require some more information before I make a decision of that magnitude.”

“Okay,” he says, almost collapsing in relief, that she hasn’t completely written him off yet. “What do you want to know?”

Veronica hunches her shoulders a little. “Do you still love me?”

“Of course I still love you!”

“Are you _in_ love with me?”

“Ronnie,” he murmurs. “I never stopped being in love with you.”

“But you also love Betty.”

His breath catches in his chest, cheeks hot with shame. “Yes.”

“Are you in love with her too?”

The earlier nausea he felt starts kicking back in. “I don’t know.”

“Jesus Christ, Archie,” she mutters.

“I’m sorry, I can’t just control how I feel! It’s not that easy!”

“So what do you expect me to do?” she asks him in a hard voice. “How am I supposed to be with you knowing you have feelings for another girl? And not just any girl, a girl who used to be in love with you, a girl you have so much _history_ with?”

“I’m not asking you to,” he says thickly. “If you… l’d get it if you never want to talk to me again.”

“Well lucky for me I somehow still love you. Which makes this a hell of a lot more complicated.”

“What do you want?” he asks her. “After everything I did to you, I’ll do, I’ll do anything Ronnie, I’d still do anything for you, you know that, right?”

“Would you stop spending time with Betty?”

Archie stares at her. “I… I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s falling apart. She needs me, Veronica. I can’t just… I can’t abandon her like that.”

“Archie.” Veronica takes a step closer and looks at him with serious eyes. “I will not share you with Betty. That’s never going to happen.”

“I’m not asking for that.”

“You can’t have both of us,” Veronica says sharply. “So either you want to be with me or you don’t.”

“I do want to be with you,” he insists. “But” -

“But what?”

“But I can’t just… whatever I’m feeling for Betty, I can’t just turn it off because you want me to. I can’t control my feelings.”

“Wrong answer,” she spits, and turns around to go inside.

“Ronnie!”

She whirls around and there’s something beautiful about her wrath, like she’s a fiery goddess he isn’t even worthy of looking at. “No. You need to figure out what you want. And I need to figure out what I want. We’ll pick this up in the morning. I’ve had enough for one day, thank you very much.”

She stomps across the sidewalk and disappears inside the Pembrooke, leaving him standing there on the sidewalk with shaking hands and a knot in his stomach. He stumbles back to his truck and gets in but his hands are shaking so hard it takes him two tries to turn over the engine. He only makes it a couple blocks before he starts crying, stupid choked sobs he can’t hold back because he just ruined one of the best things he ever had and it’s too late to fix it.

It’s all his fault. Everything that’s happened between the four of them started with him, when he started thinking about Betty differently, noticing her hair and her pretty eyes and he couldn’t not touch her, find little ways to feel close to her because he just couldn’t help himself, and because Betty is nice she didn’t immediately shut it down, and maybe things with her and Jughead weren’t going well before that and he didn’t know, maybe her putting their relationship on a break had nothing to do with him but he doesn’t think it would’ve happened if he’d left Betty alone.

This is so like him. Never satisfied, almost wanting more, thinking with his dick instead of his head. He never meant to hurt anyone, he really thought that what he and Betty were doing wasn’t so bad. Yeah, it was wrong, on some level, he knew that, but it wasn’t like they were hooking up, it’s not like they’d made some kind of secret declaration of feelings.

It was just a dumb mistake, treating Betty that way when they were both in relationships with other people. He knows how she used to feel about him, he knew on some level that flirting with her like that was a little cruel in some way, teasing her after he rejected her and hooked up with a lot of girls but never her, because he doesn’t have a lot of self restraint but he knew that if he’d given into Betty sophomore he would’ve broken her, he wouldn’t have been able to give her what she needed.

Except now Betty’s broken anyway, Jughead and Veronica got massively hurt and didn’t deserve any of it, and it’s all his fault. 

He just couldn’t help himself. He can never fucking help himself.

His dad would be so ashamed of him.

When he gets home he parks the truck and crosses the street but instead of going inside he stops in front of Betty’s house. He pulls out his phone and opens their text thread, he hasn’t heard from her since earlier today when he lashed out and sent her a bunch of mean texts in a row. He wouldn’t blame her for ignoring him again but he texts her anyway: _Can you come outside?_

He really doesn’t expect her to answer but after a few minutes the front door to her house opens and Betty comes out barefoot, wearing pink polka dot pajama shorts and one his old football sweatshirts from freshmen year that he let her steal one night when they were up late studying for their finals and she was cold and he never asked for it back, because he liked it, the idea of Betty wearing his clothes. 

“Hey,” she says tentatively, closing the door gently behind her. 

“Hey,” he says back hoarsely.

Betty curls her fingers around the cuffs of her sweatshirt. “Are you okay?”

“I miss my dad,” he chokes out, crumpling over a little, and hides his face in the crook of his elbow.

“Archie.” Betty rushes down the steps towards him but she doesn’t come close enough to touch.

“I’m sorry,” he cries. “You were right, we should’ve been honest from the beginning, this is all my fault, I shouldn’t have texted those things to you, I’m so sorry Betty, I’m such a piece of shit, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I used to be able to talk to my dad about stuff and now I’ll never, I’ll never” -

“Hey, no, don’t.” Betty pulls his arm away from his face so she can wind her arms around his neck and press her cheek against his. “It’s not your fault, okay? It was mine, I should’ve stopped it right away, I should’ve told Jughead as soon as it started happening.”

“I started it though,” he says, his voice thick with tears. “And I knew you were with him and I was with Veronica and I love her Betty, but she won’t… I can’t have both of you.”

Betty stiffens in his arms. “Is that what she said?”

“Yeah.”

She sighs and lays her head on his chest. “What are you going to do?”

He wraps his arms around her. “I don’t know. She said we could talk in the morning.”

“Mm. So you’re not… exactly broken up, or…?”

“I don’t know.” He closes his eyes and focuses on the feeling of her warm body in his arms. “The ball’s kind of in her court at the moment.”

“Do you still want to be with her?” Betty asks tremulously.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I know I love her, and she’s a good girlfriend Betty, she’s always been there for me. But it hasn’t exactly been a smooth relationship. I always thought that made us strong, that we always came back together. But now I’ve been wondering… maybe we’re hanging onto something that hasn’t really been working in a while. She has… this whole life ahead of her, and I’m just… I feel like we’re going in different directions sometimes and I don’t know what to do about that. I want her to have anything she wants.”

“I think what she wants is you.”

“She told me if we got back together… she asked if I would stop spending time with you.”

Betty looks up at him with eyes full of fear. “What?”

“I told her no,” he assures her. “I’d never… I’d never turn my back on you like that okay? Not for anyone.”

“Even if it means losing Veronica?” Betty asks in a tiny voice.

“I don’t want to lose anyone,” he whispers. “But I’m not going to abandon my best friend either.”

“How’d she take that?”

“Not great,” he admits. “She doesn’t… she didn’t grow up here with us. I don’t know if she’ll ever really get what we had before she came to town.”

Betty idly traces her thumb up and down his neck. “Maybe.”

“Is it stupid to hope that somehow this is going to all work out in the end and they’ll forgive us?”

“Probably,” Betty admits. “But I guess that also makes me stupid becuase I think about that too.”

Archie sighs, he’s emotionally exhausted but he feels too worked up to be able to sleep. “I don’t want to go in yet.”

“Wanna go for a walk?” Betty offers.

“Okay.” He lets her go and Betty gives him a shy smile.

“Let me just run in and grab my shoes, I’ll be right back.”

He watches her duck back into the house and she comes out a minute later wearing a pair of slip-on sneakers. She locks the front door, loops the stretchy plastic key ring over her wrist and comes back down the steps to where he’s waiting for her.

“This way?” he suggests, tilting his head vaguely north, and Betty nods.

They start walking down the block, Betty on his right so he’s walking on the side closest to the street. He doesn’t know why he does it but it just feels right; he reaches down to hold her hand but when he wraps his fingers around it Betty gasps and wrenches it away from him to hold her hand against her chest.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, reaching for her wrist to examine her hand. Her knuckles are scraped over and look a little swollen. “What’d you do?”

“It’s nothing, I’m fine.” She pulls her hand out of his grasp. “It was just a dumb accident, I caught it in the door.”

“You should really ice that,” he advises.

“Okay, Dr. Andrews,” she teases gently. 

He snorts. “I’ve been in enough fights to bust up my hands, trust me, ice is your friend.”

“Okay, I will.” She sounds a little more serious as she lets her arms drop and tilts her head up towards the sky. “Oh my god, Archie, look, Cassiopeia!”

He tilts his head to the sky and follows where Betty is pointing her finger until he sees it. “Oh wow.”

“That was one of your dad’s favorites, right?” she asks fondly, looking up at the constellation.

Archie stares at her. “You remember that?”

“Of course I do. It’s one of my favorites too.” She gives him a sad smile.

“Hey, c’mere.” He slings his right arm around her shoulders. “Can we do this for a minute? Just look at the stars?”

“Of course. I’m always here if you need a stargazing partner.” She loops her left arm around his waist and leans into his side, head resting on his shoulder with her chin tipped up to the velvety night sky.

So they stand there, and they look at the stars, and Archie knows there’s an unbelievable amount of shit he’s going to have to face in the morning but right now, standing under his father’s favorite constellation with Betty snuggled under his arm, observing it with an equal level of wonder, he feels like maybe everything will end up being okay.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited/updated the tags so as usual please check them out before reading.

Betty’s only been asleep for an hour when her phone wakes her up with a text. She groans, she and Archie ended up walking in circles around the block for a while and she went to bed late. Her heart drops when she sees that the text is from Veronica. Betty swipes at the screen to read the text, her eyes widening as she realizes that Veronica has sent it as group text that includes Archie and Jughead.

The text simply reads: _Pop’s. 8am._

Betty stares down at her phone. Jughead still wasn’t home when she came back from her walk with Archie and for the first time Betty wonders if he and Veronica are commiserating over milkshakes or rum right now, if they’re plotting Archie and Betty’s demise. She doesn’t know what to text back, she feels like she’s been summoned, not asked, but how can she say no to Veronica after everything Betty’s done to her?

She texts back a thumbs up emoji because she’s too much of a coward to type actual words, and before she can put her phone down it trills with a text from Archie. _Did you read it?_

Before she can compose a text back he sends her another one, _What do I say?_

_Idk I just sent an emoji._

_Do you think they’re together right now?_

_Maybe?_

_Backyard?_

She bites her lip and waits a minute before caving in and typing _Okay._

She gets out of bed and throws a sweatshirt over her camisole. She gets another text as she tiptoes out of her room but it’s just Archie’s response to the group chat, even more pathetic than hers - a single check mark. Betty pads downstairs and jams her feet into her sneakers before quietly walking out the back door into the cool night air. 

She flips the sweatshirt hood up over her hair and slips her hands into the pockets as she walks towards Archie’s backyard. He comes out the door in a white tee shirt and grey sweats, hair a little wild. When he sees her he leans up against the wall and waits for her to cross the yard to him.

“What’re we going to do?” he asks her immediately. 

“What do you mean, we’re going to go.”

Archie works his jaw. “Why do you think she wants to do this with all four of us?”

Betty shrugs. “They both have a right to be mad at both of us. It’s very, ah, efficient. They get to both speak their piece to us and we’re going to sit there and take it.”

He rubs his eyes. “She isn’t going to take me back, is she?”

“I don’t know,” Betty answers honestly.

“Would you take Jug back?”

“I’m the one who asked for a break,” she reminds him.

“No, I know, but if he said he’d take you back, would you want that?”

“No,” she whispers. “Not… not right now, anyway.”

His eyes lock on her face. “Why not?”

She takes her hands out of her pockets so she can wrap her arms around herself, she’s freezing. “I still feel the same way I did the night I… the reasons for going on a break still stand. Besides, I don't think I want to be anyone’s girlfriend right now. I can’t handle that on top of everything else anymore.”

“So where does that leave us?” he asks tightly.

“I don’t know. You’re the one who didn’t tell Veronica you had… feelings about me, you’re the one who didn’t want to break up with her and you’ve mentioned quite a lot about how much you love her. Is there even an us here? If Veronica takes you back tomorrow you won’t walk away from that.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Betty shivers. “What are you talking about?”

“If she doesn’t take me back tomorrow, which she probably won’t, would you want something to happen between us?”

The question makes her feel dizzy. She’s never really thought about that beyond the physical _want_ of it. The idea of it actually being on the table, her and Archie, being seriously discussed, is too much to process.

“I’m not in love with you!” she blurts out.

He gives her a startled look. “That’s not what I was asking.”

“I just want to be clear, I didn’t break up with him because of you. It wasn’t like I suddenly developed feelings for you again.”

Archie kicks off the wall. “But do you?”

“Do I what?”

He puts his hands on her shoulders and she jumps, which makes him frown and pulls her closer to him. “C’mere, you’re freezing.”

She’s so tired, she lets herself sink into his chest and it feels so good to be held that she wants to cry. “I don’t know,” she whispers.

“What?”

“I don’t know if I have feelings for you.”

“That isn’t a no,” he points out.

“No,” she sighs. “It’s not.”

“We should go in and try to get some sleep,” he mutters. “We have to get up in like four hours.”

Betty groans. “This is going to be so bad.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “But we’ve been through worse than this, remember? We’ve… been through a lot, Betty. We can handle this.”

“I don’t know,” she says shakily. “That stuff… all the violence and investigating and scheming, that was different. I could… I don’t know, compartmentalize it. This is different, this is… we can’t lose them, Archie.”

“Hey, that’s not going to happen,” he murmurs.

“You don’t know that.”

He sighs and squeezes her a little tighter before letting go. “We both need to at least try to get a little sleep. Want to walk over together in the morning?”

“Okay,” she agrees.

“Hey,” he says. “Whatever happens tomorrow, I’ve got your back. Okay?”

“Okay.” Betty blinks hard so she doesn’t cry. “Same here.”

*

In the morning Betty comes out of her house wearing a grey tee shirt and a pair of worn skinny jeans, her hair pulled back in a messy knot instead of its usual ponytail, a leather mini backpack dangling over one shoulder. Archie watches her pull the door shut and lock it before slipping her keys into the pocket of her jeans and putting her free arm through the other strap of her backpack as she walks down the steps to where he's waiting for her on the sidewalk.

Up close Betty looks terrible. She’s paler than usual and there are circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her lips are chapped. “Hey,” she says softly, and turns down the sidewalk.

“Hey.” He starts walking with her, chest tightening when he sees the way she’s holding her left arm close to her body, bent at the elbow so her forearm splays across her stomach. “How’s your hand?”

Her eyes flick towards him and dart away. “It’s fine.”

“Can I see it?”

“Why?”

“Betty.”

She lets out a little annoyed sound but she slowly unfolds her arm and holds it out to him. He stops walking as soon as he takes her by the wrist, her hand looks ten times worse than it did last night. Her knuckles are covered in scabs and swollen, the skin an angry red that bleeds out into a blue and purple bruise splashed over the back of her hand.

“Jesus, Betty,” he exhales. “How hard did you get it?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbles. “It looks worse than it feels.”

“Looks like it hurts.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Make a fist,” he demands.

Betty rolls her eyes but she slowly curls her fingers in towards her palm, and she can do it but when he looks at her face her eyes are glassy with tears and her jaw is clenched.

“Did you even ice it last night?” Archie asks.

She pulls her hand away and cradles it against her chest. “I forgot.”

“Great.” He runs a hand through his hair, exasperated. “I guess you can ice it at Pop’s.”

“Okay,” she says in a small voice, and starts walking again.

He sighs loudly as he walks next to her. He’s nervous about seeing Veronica, and Jughead is probably going to rip Archie a new one for hitting on Betty when she was still with him, and part of Archie is completely ready to expect a punch in the face upon arrival.

He’s made his peace with that. He was selfish, he acted dishonorably, he deserves to be punished for hurting two innocent people. 

He deserves it.

“Are you nervous?” he asks her.

“Uh, yeah, I’m trying to focus on not throwing up actually.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you eat anything?”

She presses her good hand against her forehead. “No.”

“Are you seriously going to throw up?”

She breathes shallowly through her nose. “I don’t know.”

“Hey, stop for a second.” He catches her by the shoulder and when she looks up at him her mouth is pinched and she’s so pale she’s almost white. 

“Talk to me,” he pleads quietly. “This isn’t… this isn’t normal.”

“I’m not _normal?_ ” she bites out.

“I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just, you’re having a really extreme reaction to having a conversation” -

“Oh god,” she moans, closing her eyes.

“Betty, I wasn’t saying you weren’t normal, but getting this upset” -

“Oh god, I’m gonna be sick.” Betty whirls around and dry heaves into someone’s rose bushes.

He’d hold her hair but it’s already tied back so he cups her shoulders, wincing at the hacking sounds she makes as she convulses under his hands. It stops pretty quickly, probably because there was nothing in her system to begin with, but Betty doesn’t straighten up. She stays hunched over, her shoulders shaking, and Archie realizes she’s sobbing so hard she isn’t even making noise.

“Betty.” When she doesn’t respond he wraps his arms around her from behind. “Alright, I got you, you’re okay.”

“Don’t,” she chokes out. “Don’t… don’t tell them I got this upset.”

“Jughead and Veronica?”

She nods limply, a heartbreaking little sob slipping out of her mouth. “Please.”

“Okay,” he whispers. “I won’t.”

Betty makes a weird keening sound. “We fucked up so bad, Arch.”

He exhales heavily and rests his cheek against the top of her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Betty whirls around in his arms, eyes wet with tears. “Yes it was! I’m the one, I’m the one who couldn’t, I couldn’t handle it anymore and I don’t even know why and I still love him Archie, I swear I do, I just, I couldn’t do it anymore and instead of talking to him I let you, I let you” -

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m the one who… I just couldn’t stop.” His stomach feels hot with guilt. “I don’t know what happened. I still love Veronica” -

Betty winces and blinks back tears. “Then why did you” -

“I don’t know!” He lets go of her to throw his arms up in frustration. “It - the way I feel about her has nothing to do with how I feel about you!”

“What does that even mean?” she sniffs. “ If you really loved her” -

“I do really love her!”

“Then why did you keep flirting with me?” Betty’s doing that thing with her mouth that always breaks him, her bottom lip trembling. “How could you just lead me on like that if you still love her? Where you just… oh god, were you just… was I just some stupid game to you? See how pathetic crazy Betty Cooper is, how easily it would be to seduce me?”

“No!” he shouts. “Jesus, Betty! Do you really think that’s how I see you?”

“Then what?” she shouts right back. “How could you do this to us? Veronica and I…” Betty starts crying. “All we ever did was love you and you broke both our hearts. You broke my heart, Archie.”

He suddenly feels like she won’t be the only one heaving into a rose bush today. “I… never meant to hurt you. Either of you.”

Betty crosses her arms over her stomach, tilting her head back a little as she blinks her tears away. “Then what did you mean to do?”

“I don’t know,” he says thickly. “I just… you and I, we never… we missed our window, I guess, and maybe because it’s senior year, I don’t know, or maybe I’m just as fucked up as everyone else but I… I just started feeling like… like I needed to know…”

“Know what?” she whispers.

“If there was still… what we had, if we could ever… fuck, Betty, I don’t know. You and Veronica are going to school next fall and maybe there’s this part of me that…”

“What?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “She’s going to meet other guys in college. Guys who are way smarter than me, guys who are, you know, doing important shit and what do I have to offer her? Nothing! I don’t have any money, my parents aren’t billionaires, I’m not exactly an academic genius. What if… what if she goes to college and realizes she could so much better than dumb, small town Archie Andrews?”

“God, you really are an idiot,” Betty sneers. “All Veronica ever needed was you, Archie. She loves you.”

“She’s better than me,” he confesses. “She’s smart, and runs freaking businesses and she… she deserves someone as amazing as her.”

“Don’t you think that’s up to Veronica?”

He shrugs. “Don’t think it really matters at this point. I’ve already screwed up too much.”

“I don’t… I still don’t understand what this has to do with me. Why you… did what you did.”

Archie can’t look her in the eye. “Because I wanted to… I wanted to know what it would be like.”

“What what would be like?”

He can feel his face flushing. “Being close to you.”

Betty pushes her fingers into her temples. “That’s kind of messed up, Arch.”

“I know,” he whispers.

“God, when did our lives get so screwed up?” Betty rubs at her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” He swallows back a lump in his throat. “I’m so… I know I didn’t treat either of you right, I, I was just so confused and I didn’t… I don’t know Betty. I’m just… I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah.” Betty wipes under her nose with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Are you… I get that I messed everything up and dragged you into this but… you don’t like, hate me, do you?” he asks tentatively.

Betty’s face crumples as she reaches up to hug him. “I could never hate you.”

He exhales in relief as he wraps his arms back around her. “Thank you.”

She pulls away a little to look up at him. “Could you ever hate me?”

He stares at her, surprised. “Of course not.”

She gives him a sad attempt at a smile. “We’d better go. We’re going to be late.”

He sighs and steps away from her. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”


	8. Chapter 8

When Archie and Betty get to Pop’s they both immediately spot Jughead and Veronica sitting on the same side of a booth that’s next to the windows. Betty’s stomach feels like a twisted up knot and her hand is throbbing; the idea of sitting across from Jughead and Veronica right now makes her feel like she might faint. She’s done bad things before, she’s lied and made crazy decisions and _she could’ve killed him, it could’ve been her, holding the rock_ -

“Hey.” Archie puts his hand on her wrist, careful not to touch the bruise splotched over the back of her hand. “You okay?”

“Aren’t you nervous?” she whispers. She can’t look back over at Jughead and Veronica, sure they’re staring at her.

“Think about it like a football game.”

Betty looks sideways at him, baffled. “What?”

“Visualize executing all your plays. You’re a winner. You’re going to win. Just imagine winning.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “You are being such a useless teenage boy right now. I don’t think a football metaphor is going to cut it here.”

“It’s called having a positive mindset.”

“It’s called, you’re being delusionally optimistic and overly confident.”

“Look, you go into a fight, you hold your head up, even if you think you can’t win.”

Betty swallows back a lump in her throat. “I don’t want any of us to fight.”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Now who’s being delusional?”

“Fine,” she mutters. “Let’s face the music then.”

She lets Archie gently lead her by the elbow over to the booth, her eyes on her shoes. He slides into the booth to sit across from Veronica and Betty climbs in next to him, carefully avoiding Jughead’s gaze.

“Well, now that everyone’s here,” Veronica starts.

“Hey, give us one second, Ronnie.” Archie leans across Betty to wave at Pop. “Hey Pop, could I get a cup of ice and an extra napkin, please?”

Betty watches Veronica’s face pinch up a little. “What’s going on?”

“Betty hurt her hand,” Archie explains.

“What?” Jughead asks sharply.

“It’s not a big deal,” Betty mumbles. “I caught it in the door last night.”

“Can I see?” he asks.

Betty freezes. “It’s not that bad.”

“Then let me see it,” Jughead counters in a hard voice.

She timidly holds her hand out to him. He cradles it between his and examines the bruise over the back of it. He shuts his eyes briefly and when he looks at her again she knows he doesn’t believe her.

“Betts,” he sighs, and his voice makes her physically ache.

“Excuse me, am I supposed to know what’s going on?” Veronica asks.

“I bruised my hand,” Betty answers her softly.

Veronica peers over where her hand is still being examined by Jughead. “Looks like it hurts.”

Betty winces as she takes her hand back from him. “Yeah.”

“Sorry,” Veronica offers.

Betty looks down at the table. “Thanks.”

Pop comes over with a glass of ice and a cloth napkin, and tells Archie he’ll be back with a pot of coffee and pancakes for everyone in a few minutes. Archie thanks him and covers the glass with the napkin, deftly flips the glass over and ties the corners of the napkin together to create a makeshift ice pack.

“Here.” He makes her lay her hand flat on the table and covers it with the ice. “Leave that on, I’ll set a timer on my phone.”

“Stop bossing me around,” she grumbles quietly.

“Then stop acting like an idiot” -

“Excuse me for interrupting, but can we begin now?” Veronica asks.

“What exactly is this, anyway?” Archie asks her. “Why are we all meeting here like this?”

Veronica gives him and Betty a terrifying smile. “This is mediation.”

“Are we getting divorced?” Betty jokes weakly.

“Jughead, my notes please.” Veronica turns to Jug, who pulls a notebook out from inside his jacket and passes it to her. “Thank you. Now, there are some preliminary things we’d like to get out of the way, establishing facts and the like” -

“Wait.” Archie looks baffled. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Veronica leans towards him, her eyes sharp and cold. “Let me break it down for you, Archiekins. Jughead and I have been up all night talking and the way we see it, we have two options here. We can continue to fight with each other while the entire school gossips about us and let what you two did ruin the rest of our senior year, or the four of us can come to some kind of… agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” Betty asks softly, almost too afraid to be hopeful.

“We’d like to establish some facts first.” Veronica clears her throat. “And then we’ll talk about our proposal.”

“Ronnie.” Archie sounds frustrated.

“What, Archie?”

He ducks his head a little. “Are we… did you figure out what you wanted?” 

Veronica leans back in the booth, and looks out the window instead of at Archie. “I did.”

Archie stares at her but Veronica doesn’t elaborate, and Betty sees it when he really gets it because Archie’s face falls and he rubs his eyes for a second.

Pop comes back and they all give him painfully tight smiles as he pours mugs of coffee. He sets down pancakes in front of each of them and says to yell if they need anything before rushing off to take an order.  
They all drink their coffee in silence for a few minutes, the tension so thick Betty feels like she can’t breathe. Across the booth Veronica shakes out her napkin and picks up her knife and fork.

“So, I believe we were at the part where Betty and Archie tell us the truth for once.” Veronica slices off a bite of her pancake and stabs it with her fork.

Betty glances sideways at Archie, who shrugs uneasily at her. “Okay,” Betty says tentatively. “What do you want to know?”

“Are the two of you” - Veronica gives her and Archie a disdainful look - “together?”

“N-no!” Betty stammers.

“Archie?” Veronica asks.

“Ronnie,” he murmurs. “C’mon, we talked about this.”

“We talked about the fact that you have feelings for Betty,” Veronica hisses. “Excuse me for wanting some clarification.”

“We’re not,” Betty says quickly. “Nothing’s happened between us, I swear!”

“You mean, besides your _moment?_ ” Jughead asks scathingly.

Betty’s cheeks heat. “Yeah.”

He snorts. “Okay, then.”

“Hey, man, take it easy,” Archie cuts in. “She’s having a rough morning as it is.”

“I don’t need you to defend me, Archie,” Betty mutters, utterly humiliated.

“Are you two done fighting over Betty now, may we continue?” Veronica snipes.

“Jesus Veronica, is it so hard to believe that I can love you and be worried about Betty at the same time?” Archie asks her.

“Archie, quit it.” Betty would punch him if her hand wasn’t covered with an ice pack. “You aren’t helping.”

Veronica sighs. “Well this isn’t an auspicious start.”

Archie pinches the bridge of his nose. “Look, nothing’s happened between me and Betty, but we’re still… fuck, why am I so bad at this?”

“Is it bad that watching you struggle to articulate your emotions is slightly amusing?” Jughead asks.

“Don’t be mean,” Betty pleads.

“What?” Jughead shrugs. “Archie loves Betty, Archie loves Veronica. That’s a lot of feelings for one jock to have at once.”

“You’re being a dick,” Archie complains.

“My bad,” Jughead sneers. “And how would you like me to react to finding out that you were hitting on my girlfriend while we were still together?”

“I get it, I fucked up!” Archie shoves a hand through his hair. “You don’t need to rub it in, I feel bad enough.”

“Do you?” Jughead asks.

“Jug,” Betty murmurs.

“Of course I do!” Archie looks wounded. “I know I make dumb choices sometimes but I wasn’t deliberately trying to hurt anyone.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Veronica says.

“Okay, can we start over?” Betty asks. “These are the facts, in chronological order. Archie and I had a moment where there was no actual kissing, I’m not saying that makes it okay but just in the interest of full disclosure, nothing actually happened. And then there was some, um. Flirting. We discussed that it needed to stop. And then I, me and Jug, you know” -

“Is Archie the reason you two broke up?” Veronica asks bluntly.

“No,” Betty says firmly. “And we’re not… we’re just on a break, right now. We’re not officially like…” She trails off when she realizes Jughead isn’t looking at her. “Jug?”

He reaches up and scratches the back of his neck, eyes darting around. “I just think it might be less complicated if we were, officially, um… broken up.”

Betty recoils. “What?”

“You can’t have it both ways, Betts,” he says softly. “I’m not going to wait around for you forever while you figure out this thing with Archie.”

She feels like her heart is going to pound out of her chest. “I don’t remember asking you to!” 

“This is what I want,” he says, his voice gentle but very clear. “I’m letting you off the hook, Betts. I’m setting us both free.”

“You’re - you’re breaking up with me?” Betty asks Jughead tremulously.

His lips twist. “You lied to me, Betty. You should’ve told me what happened, I can’t… I don’t trust you anymore.”

She stares at him in disbelief. She knows he has the right to be mad at her but she thought this was temporary, she thought he still loved her. “Then why are we here?”

“What?” Veronica asks her.

Betty bites the inside of her cheek so she doesn’t cry. “If Jughead and I are completely broken up now and you obviously aren’t going to take Archie back then why did you ask us to come here?”

“Maybe we should just skip ahead,” Jughead mutters.

“Fine.” Veronica sighs loudly and flips through a few pages of the notebook. “So. As of right now all four of us are completely single, yes?”

“Yeah, you don’t need to rub it in,” Archie mutters.

“You’ve brought this upon yourself,” Veronica sing-songs.

Archie crosses his arms over his chest. “Fine. So we’re all single, so what?”

“So,” Veronica continues. “We go back to school on Monday as friends. We sit together at lunch, we talk to each other in class, and people will stop gossiping about us. The official story will be something like the four of us deciding to take a break from relationship drama to fully enjoy the last few months of our high school experience but of course we all still love each other and remain unshakably bonded to each other.”

“Is that true?” Betty asks.

Veronica combs a lock of hair away from her face. “Is what true?”

Betty looks at Veronica so she doesn’t have to look at Jughead. “Do we all still love each other?”

Veronica bites her lip and looks at Archie. “Sometimes love isn’t enough, Betty.”

Betty and Archie both recoil like they’ve been slapped, and Veronica makes a frustrated sound. “Would you just let me get through this before you start asking questions like that?”

“Sorry,” Betty whispers.

“It’s alright. Just, hear us out, okay? Jughead and I have been up all night talking about this. To recap, we are all now single. We’re all friends. The two of you are free to continue exploring whatever the hell” -

“Wait, what?” Archie gives her a bewildered look. “You’re giving me and Betty permission to” -

“I said no questions until I was done!” Veronica pouts. “And I can’t say I’m thrilled about the idea of you and my best friend together but seeing as I’m no longer your girlfriend you don’t need my permission.”

Archie’s eyes go round. “Whoa.”

Betty covers her eyes with her forehead and takes a deep breath so she doesn’t completely lose it. “Veronica?”

“Yes, Betty?”

“Could you please explain what you meant by, ‘free to explore’? Sorry, I know you said no questions until you were finished.”

“I don’t mind clarifying,” Veronica says graciously. God does Betty envy that, Veronica’s coolness under pressure. “Like I said, we’re all single. We’re all free to date who we please. All we ask is that if the two of you do… well, if anything between the two of you goes beyond platonic all we ask is that you have the decency to be respectful. No pda at school, no talking about weekend trysts, no rubbing our faces in it.”

“Oh,” Betty exhales shakily. 

“Wait, so like, you guys can date too?” Archie asks.

Veronica gives up and flips the notebook shut. “Yes, Archiekins, that’s what being single means.”

Betty glances at Jughead, hating that her eyes tear up. “Jug?”

“C’mon, Betts,” he says softly. “I thought this is what you wanted.”

“No,” she protests weakly. “No, this was not what I wanted.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” he says evenly, like he’s trying very hard to be calm. “If you get to be single then I do too.”

“I said I wanted a break,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “We never talked about dating other people.”

“Betty, can we focus please?” Veronica asks softly. 

Betty tilts her head back against the booth and glances at Archie. “Is my hand done?”

He looks at his phone. “Eight minutes left.”

Betty rubs her eyes with her good hand. “Okay,” she grits out. “So we’re all single, we’re all free to date who we want, with discretion of course. I assume that goes both ways?”

“Of course,” Veronica confirms.

And you guys are totally fine with that?”

“How we feel right now isn’t the point. This is damage control,” Veronica tells her. “This is the best way we can think of to minimize future pain all around. Do you disagree?”

“No,” Betty whispers.

“So what, that's your plan? We all date other people for a while?” Archie asks cautiously, like he doesn’t really believe Veronica.

“Yes. After graduation we’ll meet up again and re-discuss. See how everyone feels after a few months… and, well, we’ll re-evaluate and go from there.” Veronica looks at Betty and Archie. “Now you may ask questions.”

Betty doesn’t have any questions, she’s too stunned by this turn of events to think straight. Her chest feels tight and she doesn’t even bother trying to eat her pancakes because she already feels sick to her stomach. Next to her Archie looks like he’s barely keeping it together, staring blankly at Veronica with glassy eyes.

“Is this really what you want?” he asks in a shaky voice.

“No, what I want is to go back in time before any of this happened but that’s not how reality works,” Veronica says stiffly. “So, given the circumstances, I think this is the most logical decision.”

“So what happens if Archie and I decide to… explore our relationship?” Betty asks weakly.

Veronica tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what happens after graduation then? What would that mean for…?”

She looks desperately at Jughead, who winces and looks down at his plate. “I think that’s something we won’t know until it happens,” he mutters.

“Jug,” she hisses.

“What do you want me to say, Betts?” he asks. “What’s done is done. You can’t expect me to wait around forever for you to figure out how you feel.”

“I… I have to go to the bathroom,” Betty says faintly.

“Your hand isn’t done yet!” Archie protests.

“Yeah, I am though. I’m done.” Betty shakes off the ice and slides out the booth before Archie can stop her.

She stumbles in between tables and rushes down the hallway to the ladies room. Betty pushes her way inside and goes over to the sinks, grips the edge with her hands and leans over the sink as she starts to hyperventilate.

It’s over. She and Jughead are really over.

She knows she’s the one who wanted a break, she’s the one who didn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend but she always thought it was temporary, that she'd figure her shit out and eventually find her way back to him.

She wonders what’s wrong with her that she always assumed he’d take her back.

The sounds of the door swinging makes her look up at the mirror. She sees Veronica walk in, hovering against the wall as she takes Betty in, the way she’s hunched over the sink. Betty looks back down, trying to breathe but when she tries it comes out in strangled gasps.

“Jesus, B.” Veronica says. “Breathe.”

“I’m sorry,” Betty chokes out. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an asshole.”

Veronica sighs and walks over to lean against the sink next to Betty. “Yeah,” she says gently. “But so is he he.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Betty cries. “I swear, I thought about it all the time.”

“Why didn’t you?” Veronica asks quietly.

Betty swipes at her eyes. “I knew it would hurt you. You’ve been… V, you’re my best friend. I feel sick about this, I never, ever wanted to do something like this to you, I swear.”

“You still did it though.” Veronica doesn’t say it in a mean way but Betty flinches anyway.

“I know,” Betty whispers.

“I don’t understand,” Veronica says. “After all this time… why now?”

“I don’t know,” Betty admits tearfully. “Maybe it’s just because we’ve all been through so much and I don’t know how to go back to normal or maybe it’s that we never worked out our feelings when we were younger” -

“You mean before I moved here and he fell in love with me.”

“No, Veronica,” Betty protests. “This isn’t about you. I mean, of course it’s about you because I know we hurt you and it’s awful, what we did, but it’s not… I promise you, I didn’t want to hurt you and I know Archie didn’t either. He loves you. He never stopped loving you.”

“But he loves you too,” Veronica states. “He loved you before he even knew me.”

 _Because he was mine first,_ a nasty little voice in Betty’s head says. “No,” Betty argues. “He was never… he didn’t want me then.”

“But he still loved you.”

“Do you hate me?” Betty asks shakily. “I’d understand if you hated me.”

“No. Part of me wishes I did. That would make this all a lot easier. But I don’t.” Veronica’s mouth twists to the side. “That’s probably why this hurts so much.”

*

When they’re done with breakfast (eaten in painfully awkward silence) Jughead is the first to leave, zooming away on his bike. Betty waits outside the front entrance of Pop’s so Archie can walk Veronica to her car. She doesn’t say anything to him as she leads him over to where she’s parked, dark sunglasses on her face.

“Veronica,” he says weakly as she unlocks her car. “Are you really sure this is what you want? There’s no way we can’t work things out?”

Veronica opens the driver’s side door so she can through her bag inside before slamming it shut. “You cheated on me Archie. Just because you and Betty didn’t hook up doesn’t mean you didn’t cross the line. I love myself too much to put up with something like that. I’ve always been a good girlfriend, I was loyal to you, I was there for you. And you took advantage of me, of my trust, of my generosity, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take until I’m not angry anymore.”

“Okay,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry, I understand.”

“Look.” Veronica pushes her sunglasses up into her hair and she looks exhausted, bloodshot eyes rimmed with smudged eyeliner. “There’s always been… a thing between you and her. Who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t moved here. And if you don’t deal with this now, we’re going to have to deal with it in two years, or five years, or ten years. And I can’t wait that long for you and Betty to finally figure out your feelings. I deserve better than that.”

“I know you do.”

“I need to go crash, I’ve been up all night. I’ll see you in school on Monday, okay?”

Archie blinks back tears. “Okay. Are we still… can we at least be friends?”

Her expression softens a little. “I’m going to need some time until I can really be friends with you, Archie.”

“I understand. You take all the time you need.”

Veronica leans in and kisses his cheek. “Take care, Archiekins.”

She gets into her car and he stands there on the sidewalk as she reverses out of her spot and drives away. Archie stands there for a moment, watching her car until it disappears before walking back over to where Betty’s waiting for him.

“Hey,” she says softly. “You okay?”

“Not really,” he admits. “You?”

“Not really.”

Betty gives him a smile that looks more like a grimace and they start walking towards home. They don’t talk to each other, every few blocks one of them will sniff or stifle a sob and the other one will politely ignore it. It’s obvious Betty is as devastated as he is, she must not have seen Jughead completely severing their romantic relationship coming. He still feels like he’s in shock, it’s not like he doesn’t understand why Veronica has officially broken up with him but it hasn’t really hit him yet.

When they get to her house Archie walks Betty up to her front steps. “Do you wanna, like, hang out or something?” he asks awkwardly.

Betty wipes her eyes. “No thanks. I kind of just want to be alone right now.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

She gives him a shrug as she blinks back tears. “I don’t know. You?”

“I don’t know. Call me later?”

“Okay.”

He leans in for a hug but Betty dodges him and he stumbles back. “Sorry.”

“Sorry,” she says, almost at the same time. “I’m just… I just need to process. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Okay,” he agrees. 

Betty manages to give him a half smile before she turns around and starts walking up the steps. Archie waits to make sure she gets inside before heading over to his house and letting himself in. 

“Archie?” his mom calls out. “That you?”

“Yeah!” he shouts back.

He finds her in the kitchen, working on her laptop while drinking a cup of coffee. “Hi honey,” she says when he comes in. “You were out early.”

Archie sinks into a chair. “Yeah, I uh, got breakfast at Pops with Veronica and Betty and Jug.”

His mom shut her laptop and leans across the table towards him. “Honey, are you okay? You look terrible.”

He rests his elbows on the table and holds his head in his hands. “Veronica broke up with me.”

“What?” His mom reaches over to touch his wrist. “Archie, what are you talking about?”

“I messed up, Mom,” he chokes out. “I really messed up.”

Her fingers lightly scratch against his skin. “What do you mean, you messed up? Just tell me what happened, we can fix this.”

“No,” he says thickly. “This isn’t the kind of thing you can fix, Mom.”

“Hey, I’m your mom, you’ve gotta at least let me try.”

“It’s too late. She doesn’t want to be with me anymore.”

“Well something must have happened,” she pushes. “Did you two get into a fight?”

Archie lifts his head and wipes his eyes, barely able to look at her. “I love Betty.”

His mom wrinkles her forehead. “Well I know that, you’ve loved Betty since, god, elementary school?”

“No, Mom. I _love_ love her.”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Archie mutters. “Oh.”

“And that’s why you and Veronica...”

“Yeah.”

“Oh honey.” His mom gets up and walks around the table, and puts her arm around him. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he says tearfully. “I love Veronica. She is - was - a really good girlfriend.”

“She was,” his mom says gently.

“But Betty… she…”

“What honey?”

“I think there’s this part of me that always thought we’d end up together.”

“Me too,” his mom says wryly. “I seem to remember you proposing to her when you were in second grade.”

He chokes out a laugh. “I was just a kid.”

“You’re still a kid, Archie.”

He glances sideways at her. “I don’t feel like a kid anymore, Mom.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve been through a lot in the past few years, and your dad...” her voice cracks. “I understand. But honey, you’re so young. You have your whole life in front of you. You don’t have to make these big kinds of decisions right now. You’re almost out of high school, you should enjoy the time you have left with your friends.”

“That’s what Veronica said.”

“She always struck me as quite a smart young woman.”

“She is,” he says morosely.

“And what does Betty think about all this?”

“She and Jughead broke up the other week.”

“Really?” His mom raises an eyebrow. “I ran into Alice yesterday at the store, she didn’t mention it.”

“I’m not sure FP and her mom know. Betty’s… I think she’s, um. Kind of been having a hard time lately.”

“Well I can’t imagine that having an entire town think she killed her boyfriend was easy on her.”

He shudders, that time period is a blur of panic and fear and helplessly going along with Betty’s plan even though it might not work. It did though, but something about that night in the woods changed them all anyway, set them down a path they didn’t see coming.

“It wasn’t easy on any of us,” he mumbles.

“I know.” His mother kisses the side of his head. “Come on, it’s a nice day out, let’s go for a walk.”

“Mom,” he groans.

“C’mon, your old mom here needs to stay in shape, you can keep me company. It’ll be good for you, you’ll feel better after you clear your head.”

“Fine,” Archie agrees, mostly because he has nothing better to do.

She tousles his hair and goes to put on her shoes before meeting him on the front porch. Part of him wants to go back inside and crawl into his bed but he dutifully follows his mom instead and to his relief she doesn’t ask him anymore questions, they just walk for awhile and occasionally she points out a particularly nice house or a tree or a cute dog, and when they get back home he’s surprised that he does feel a tiny bit better.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m back! This is when Barchie really starts to get going so if you don’t like reading that you might want to bow out now. If you’re here for Barchie or are willing to suffer for the sake of the story, carry on friend :)

Jughead comes home that night just in time for family dinner. Betty’s already at the table when he walks in; she spent the entire day holed up in her room, alternately crying and staring blankly at the wall. Her left hand is covered by her napkin in her lap so her mother can’t see how bad it looks, right hand tapping anxiously against the tabletop as he sinks down across the table from her, his eyes avoiding hers.

“Betty, stop fidgeting,” her mother reprimands.

“Sorry,” Betty mumbles.

“How was the library?” FP asks Jughead, passing him the garlic bread.

Jug flicks his eyes towards Betty, just for a second. “Fine.”

Betty doesn’t know how to react to his sudden employment of eye content so she tries to ignore it and zones out, picking at her salad. She has no appetite, she wishes she could go back upstairs but she’s already bailed on dinner this week and if she can just keep it together for half an hour she can excuse herself. She keeps waiting for Jughead to announce their breakup or at least look at her again but he’s rambling about a research paper he’s working on through mouthfuls of spaghetti, like today is just a normal day.

“Betty, eat your pasta,” her mother coaxes. “It’s made from zucchini! Much lower carb count.”

“Cool,” Betty drawls, and hears Jughead snort, apparently he doesn’t hate her so much that he can’t appreciate a little sarcasm. 

She twirls her fork around with her right hand, aware of the dull throbbing pain in her other one. She manages to choke down a few bites and goes back to playing with her food, pretending to listen to her mom tell Betty and Jughead about taking JB to the nature museum so she could see some frog exhibit. 

Betty doesn’t look at Jughead but she can feel it when he looks at her. She wonders if he’s faking too, if he’s a mess on the inside just like she is or if he’s fine, if he’s over it already, cruising on his newfound freedom.

After an interminable amount of time Betty pushes back from her chair. “I’m done, may I be excused?”

Her mother peers at her plate and frowns. “You hardly ate anything.”

“It’s prom season, Mom.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Her mom gives her a vague smile. 

Betty clears her plate one handed and rushes upstairs before anyone can stop her.

*

“Hey, you,” Archie’s mom says, when she finds him in the den watching an Adam Sandler marathon on tv that evening. “Guess what I got us.”

Archie barely manages to lift his head from the nest of blankets he’s made around himself, propping his head up against the back of the couch. His mom is standing in the doorway holding a pizza box that smells incredible and his mouth waters. “No way, did you get deep dish?”

“You have to share,” she says sternly. “Now move over.”

She sets the pizza box down on the coffee table and goes back to the kitchen to get plates and napkins. Archie drags himself over to one side of the couch so his mom has room to sit next to him, rubbing his temples against the dull headache he’s had all day.

“I can’t believe you got me break up pizza,” he tells her when she comes back.

His mom smiles and picks up a slice of pizza, drops it onto a plate and hands it to him. “C’mon, say it. Tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” he says, as much to the pizza as to her.

She laughs and settles in next to him. “You doing okay?”

He gestures around with one hand. “Oh yeah, I’m having a killer Saturday night, can’t you tell?”

She reaches over and ruffles his hair. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

He takes his first bite of pizza and groans. “This is the best.”

“Thank god we have a place here that does Chicago style, I swear I would’ve gone into Giordano’s withdrawal.”

“I thought you liked Lou Malnati’s.”

“I like ‘em all baby. No city does pizza like Chicago.”

He laughs. “Veronica would debate you on that.”

“Well I suppose if you’re in the mood for thin crust by the slice that’s the size of your forearm New York is your place. But I’m biased.”

He’s been missing his dad all day, wondering what kind of advice he would give his moronic excuse for a son, and he’s overwhelmed with gratitude for his mom for being here. But it makes him sad too, he doesn't know how to love his mom without being aware of his dad’s absence. There’s a part of his that will ache forever probably, that he didn’t get them both at the same time for very long. He knows how lucky he is, to have hit the parenting jackpot with both of them in a lot of ways, he got more than a lot of people do. 

It still hurts though. Like a scab that won't heal over. 

He leans towards her and bumps his shoulder against hers. “Thanks Mom.”

She smiles “You’re welcome.”

Archie takes another bite of pizza, wondering how Betty’s doing, he hasn’t heard from her all day and he’s starting to get worried. He hasn’t heard from Veronica either but that’s to be expected, she made it pretty clear that she needed some space. 

“Do you feel any better about this Veronica and Betty situation?” his mom asks him.

“Oh no,” he declares dramatically. “No talking about feelings during pizza. Pizza time is sacred.”

She holds up one hand solemnly. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right, honey.”

*

After she gets upstairs Betty locks herself in her room and paces around before dropping back onto her bed. She curls her knees into her chest and starts to cry again, thinking about Jug sitting downstairs, carrying on the charade for their parents that everything is fine.

She cried when they went on a break but that was because she felt bad about hurting him, about not being the kind of girlfriend he deserved. Now she’s crying out of grief, thinking of all the things she’s lost, all the things she was supposed to have. They were supposed to go to prom together, they were supposed to spend the summer together, and now Betty doesn’t know if they’ll ever be together again.

If she knew this would result in a full blown breakup she would’ve kissed him one more time.

Eventually she drags herself to the bathroom and makes herself take a shower. She has to do everything right handed, it takes her twice as long to wash her hair and shave her legs. When she gets out she wraps herself up in a towel and manages to brush her wet hair back into a messy ponytail before shuffling back to her room.

It’s a warm night, Betty changes into a matching bralette and boyshort set made of soft pink fabric and pulls blue cotton sleep shorts and a white tank top on over them. She checks her phone, it’s not like she was really expecting to hear from anyone anyway but it still makes her heart sink to see no missed calls or texts. She wonders if the rest of senior year is going to be like this, no more Veronica, no more Jug, just crying in her room night after night until graduation.

She curls into the fetal position on her bed on top of her covers. She tries to imagine going to Yale next year as a single young woman, fresh meat, but she actually can’t do it, she’d been with Jughead for so long that whenever she thought about her future she automatically factored him into it. She can’t really contemplate the idea of being totally alone, without him, forever.

But then she thinks about Archie, and what Veronica said at Pop’s, and her heart starts to race. Archie’s been so off limits for so long, she’d learned how to put her unresolved feelings in a box but now they’re out and exposed and she’s more confused than ever.

How is she supposed to figure out if going for something with Archie is worth possibly losing Jughead for the rest of her life? How can she trust that he’ll still love her if she finally explores her connection to the boy next door that she’s had a crush on for years? 

And a new, scarier, thought - what if she might not care, later? What if she and Archie could actually be -

Betty springs up from her bed and begins to pace back and forth. She was happy with Jughead, she was always happy with Jughead until she wasn’t happy about anything and every time she looked at his face she thought maybe she actually could have done it and maybe she was a bad in a way that no one, not even him could really understand, maybe everything that went wrong in this town was her fault somehow, and in a way, wasn't it?

She has her father's blood running through her veins, the same blood as the Blossoms. Families made of cruel, violent fathers and crazy mothers, beautiful, obedient, terrified children doomed to repeat the same mistakes as their parents.

She thought Jug was her way out. She thought the two of them would fight the darkness together, that they’d be together through everything. Betty doesn’t know what happened, why after everything - Jason’s murder and the Black Hood and the Ghoulies and The Gargoyle King and The Farm and those fucking preppie assholes - why couldn’t she just take her happy ending?

Why did she wait until everyone was safe and happy to fall apart?

Crazy, she thinks to herself. She’s crazy, just like her mother and Polly. 

She walks back and forth across her room until she feels like she’s going to crawl out of her skin. When she looks at the clock it’s already past ten and that freaks her out even more, how has she been crying and pacing around her room for three hours when it’s only felt like minutes?

 _Dissociation_ , she hears Charles whisper to her.

She wonders where Jughead is, if he’s still home or if he went out. Maybe she should just talk to him, maybe that’s where she went wrong all along, if she had just talked to him from the beginning none of this would’ve ever happened. 

Betty snatches her phone and goes out of her room without bothering to put her slippers on. She walks down the hall to the small guest room where Jughead’s been sleeping and after standing there for a full minute hesitating, gets up her courage and knocks on the door.

“Jug?” she whispers.

No answer. She knocks again lightly but there’s no response. She’s surprised by how disappointed she is; she’s been so wound up, for hours, and it’s just instinct she guesses, old patterns driving her back to him even though she doesn’t deserve him, has given up her future with him for uncertainty and she has to press her forehead to the door for a moment as tears roll down her cheeks.

She sniffs, wiping her face, and pads downstairs. Her mom and FP are sitting on the couch watching the evening news but Betty doesn’t see Jug anywhere.

“Hi honey,” her mom calls out. “Everything okay?”

“Do you know where Jug is?”

“Yeah,” FP answers. “He’s at a party at Cheryl’s, Toni invited him.”

“He said you didn’t want to go,” her mother contributes, looking a little confused.

“Oh.” Betty rests one hand on the wall so she doesn’t fall over at the emotional punch her mother has unknowingly just delivered. “Right.” 

“Are you sure you’re okay, honey?”

“I’m fine Mom, I’m just going to get a glass of water.”

She rushes past them and escapes to the kitchen, leans against the cabinets and sets her phone down so she can cover her face with her hands and cry into her palms for a few minutes. She takes in a choppy breath and rubs her eyes, trying to calm down but she’s shaking all over. She shoves her knuckles into her mouth so they can’t hear her in the other room as she chokes on sobs, the kitchen beginning to spin a little as her chest tightens.

She picks her phone back up and texts Archie on a whim: _You up?_

 _Yeah_ , he texts back immediately. _What’s up?_

_Can I come over?_

_Garage in five?_

She texts him back a thumbs up emoji. “Mom, I’m going to Archie’s!” Betty shouts, and races out the back door before she can hear her mother’s reply.

*

Archie’s sitting on the couch in his garage when Betty comes flying in barefoot, panting like she’s been running. Before he can stand up she throws herself onto the couch next to him, her hands reaching out to grip the fabric of his tee shirt.

“Betty” -

“Archie,” she whimpers, and up close she’s a total mess; her eyes are puffy, the tip of her nose is pink and her cheeks are flushed and wet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “What happened?”

Betty bursts into tears. “I’m going crazy.”

He stares at her. “What are you talking about?”

She shakes her head, her ponytail swishing against the back of her neck. “I can’t… I can’t get my mind to slow down, I feel like my thoughts are going a hundred miles an hour and I can’t make it stop and what if it never stops, what if I’m going crazy, Archie, I think I’m going crazy!”

“Betty, hey, look at me.” He tries to reach out to hold her but she’s shaking and throwing her arms around as she talks. “Betty, you aren’t crazy.”

“Just make it stop,” she cries, pulling herself into his lap. “I can’t make it stop, please Arch, make it stop!”

“Betty, just breathe, okay? You need to calm down.” He tries to catch her wrists but she’s practically scrambling on top of him, wiggling around in his lap in a way he’s pretty sure isn’t intentional but affects him anyway.

“I can’t - I can’t calm down,” she sobs. “I can’t, I can’t stop thinking, I’ve been like this all night and I can’t make it stop, make it stop” -

“Hey, hey, okay.” Archie ducks his head so they’re eye level, trying to stay calm even though a part of him feels sick with fear at seeing her this way. “Just take a breath, okay?”

“Help me,” she gasps, staring at him with glassy panicked eyes. “Help, I can’t… I can’t…”

His chest tightens up in fear as he tries to hold her still by her shoulders, unnerved by the desperation in her voice. “Hey, okay, I’m right here. I’ve got you, what do you need?”

“Hurt me,” she begs. “Please.”

Archie’s stomach drops. “What?”

He stares at her face, into the bloodshot eyes of the girl he’s loved for a decade, wondering what happened to her that she would ever ask him something like that. He knows Betty’s had… _issues_ , has heard her mother allude to certain things, knows that girls at school sometimes talk about Betty Cooper’s hands in a tone he never understands, but he and Betty haven’t ever directly talked about what the darkness she carries looks like, what horrors she holds in her mind and what she does to make them go away.

“Please.” Betty’s eyes are spilling over with tears, her face all crumpled up like it’s killing her to ask him this. “Please. Archie, I need it” -

“No!” he says harshly, repulsed by the idea of causing her physical harm, of hurting a woman, something he’s sworn to both of his parents he’d never do. “I’m not doing that to you.”

Archie watches in horror as Betty’s eyes squeeze shut and her mouth opens in a silent cry before she does a slow collapse into his chest, her body heaving with sobs. He wraps his arms around her, feeling completely out of his depth. He’s seen Betty cry before but this is different, her body shakes so hard it looks like she’s in pain, all her muscles trembling as she clutches onto his shirt. He holds her tighter against him, sighing as he drops a kiss on top of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what you… what you’ve, um, done before…”

Betty curls up tighter, pushing her cheek into his chest. “That’s private,” she whispers.

“I know! I know. I just meant… you and I, we've had… we’ve been with other people and you’re right, that’s private. But I’m not… whatever it is that you’re looking for…”

Betty’s cries are slowing down to shuddering whimpers, her grip on his shirt relaxing. “What?”

“Don’t ever ask me to do that again,” he says, his voice shaking. “I’m never going to do that to you.”

“Okay,” she says in a small voice. “I’m sorry.”

Archie swallows back a groan. “You don’t have to be sorry, just… why would you ask me that?”

Betty shrugs against his chest. “I thought it would help.”

“Being hurt?” he asks tentatively.

She nods, still curled up against him even though she isn’t crying anymore. “Do you think I’m weird now?”

“No. I just… I don’t understand.”

“I just… I needed something to make it stop.”

He carefully slides a few fingers under her left hand and strokes them against her palm. “Haven’t you been hurt enough?”

“Maybe I deserve it,” she says quietly.

“Jesus. Betty. Don’t talk like that.”

Betty flinches. “It’s how I feel.”

“Okay.” He lets go of her with one arm to rub his eyes, he is so not qualified for this but she came to him so he’s going to have to do his best here and hope he doesn’t fuck up. “You’re allowed to feel however you feel but you know that’s not true, right?”

Betty lifts her head and she’s still so pretty even though she looks awful right now, her skin’s all blotchy and pink and her eyes are puffy from crying. “I don’t feel like I know anything right now.”

“Maybe you can just trust me on it then,” he suggests gently.

She gives him a watery smile. “Okay.”

“Hey, how's your hand, have you been icing it?”

She gives him a guilty look. “No.”

“Betty!”

“I know, I know!” she wails. “I’m sorry.”

“C’mon, let’s go.”

She pouts at him. “Why?”

“We’re icing that hand.”

She blinks wet eyes at him. “Oh.”

He scratches between her shoulder blades. “C’mon, let’s go.”

She gives him a cute pouty expression like she can get out of this with just a look, and god, Archie could drown in those ocean eyes if she let him. “Now?”

“Yeah, you need it, let’s go.” He cups her shoulders and unpeels her from his chest. “Okay?”

Betty nods in resignation, swinging her legs off of his. “Okay.”

He leads her to his house and sits her down at the kitchen table while he digs around in the freezer for the reusable ice pack. He finds it behind a few boxes of frozen meals and carries it over to Betty, makes her spread her hand flat over the table before laying the ice pack over it.

“Okay?” he asks as he sits down, watching her wince.

“Yeah, it’s just cold.”

He takes his phone out of the pocket of his sweatpants. “I’m gonna set a timer for you.”

“You are like, very into ice today. Obsessively so, one could say.”

“Between football and boxing and plain out fighting, do you know how many injuries I’ve had? If you want your hand to heal right you gotta take care of it.”

She sighs and cups her chin with her free hand. “Yeah, I know.”

“C’mon, don’t be like that.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she grumbles.

“Well you aren’t doing it!” he snaps.

Betty hunches over and for a moment he’s afraid she’s going to start crying again, but she just sighs and lays her cheek over the table. “Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

“Should we, um… talk about that?”

Betty blinks at him, obviously exhausted. “Do we have to?”

“I don’t know, do we?”

“Archie, I’m so tired.”

“I know. We’re all tired, Betty.” 

“Not Jughead.”

“What does that mean?”

“He went to a party at Toni and Cheryl’s.”

“Is that what this is really about?” he asks. “Him breaking up with you?”

“I don’t know,” she murmurs. “Archie…”

“What?”

“Do you… do you really think that there’s a chance that you and me…?”

“I don’t know,” he answers quietly. “But I think after everything… don’t we kind of owe it to ourselves to find out?”

“What about Veronica?”

“What about her?”

“If you and I… let’s say you and I try things, and it doesn’t work out, and you tell her after graduation that you want to be with her - aren’t you scared she’ll say no?”

“What if you and I try things and it does work out and I don’t want to be with her after graduation?”

A tear slides out of the corner of her eye. “Aren’t you scared of that too?”

He wonders what it would feel like to be more like Betty, to weigh the consequence of every decision and possible outcome like the fate of the world is on the line. He can’t even imagine having that kind of perceived responsibility, the kind of stress that mindset would cause. He usually goes into things blind and hopes for the best, and yeah, that hasn’t always worked out, but he’s just always sort of been that way. Even with everything that’s happened to all of them there’s a part of him that still has hope that everything will be okay.

He likes to think that part of him is his dad, always believing in the good.

“Can I ask you something?” he asks Betty.

“Sure.”

“If you knew that no one would get hurt, would you want to try?”

She gives him the saddest smile he’s ever seen. “Yeah.”

That little hopeful part of him flares like a sun. “So it’s not a question of what you actually want.”

“I’m just not sure it’s possible Arch. I don’t… I don’t know how we get out of this without anyone getting hurt.”

“That’s not something anyone can guarantee Betty, but the damage has been done. They don’t… this is what they want. They made their choice.”

“But if we actually… if you and I go into this, for real this time, and things… happen between us, like physically… we can’t take that back.”

“What if we don’t want to take it back?”

Betty’s cheeks flush. “Is that what you want?”

“I want you to be happy. And, I want to be happy, and if we could be happy together, like really happy, isn’t that something worth finding out?”

“But you still love Veronica.”

“You love Jughead,” he shoots back.

“Yeah,” Betty agrees, and blinks wet eyelashes at him. “But I love you too.”

 _She loves him too._ “Betty?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I take you out tomorrow?” 

She stares at him. “Like a date?”

He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead, but isn’t this where it’s all been going anyway? “Yeah. Let me take you on a date. Please.”

Betty furrows her brow. “You know… you know I’m not interested in being in a relationship right now, right?”

“It’s just one date, Betty, I’m not” -

“You already asked me to marry you.” Betty’s lips twitch up in a ghost of a smile.

“What can I say, I’m a romantic,” he says casually, and Betty laughs.

“So you want to take me on a date, huh?” she asks, eyes big and glassy.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I think… I think it would be good to remember what it feels like to have fun together again, you know?”

For a moment he thinks she’s going to say no but then Betty turns her face into her arm a little and gives him a hesitant smile. “Okay.”

He grins. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Betty bites her lip. “Fuck it. Let’s go on a date.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because some people still seem to need clarification, this is a reminder that this fic is about exploring the relationship dynamics between the core four in different ways, not about a specific ship being endgame. Barchie is not endgame. Bughead is not endgame. Varchie is not endgame. THERE IS NO ENDGAME. If you can’t handle reading a fic that explores multiple ships then this is not the fic for you and that’s okay! But honestly it’s not fun for me, a person with a lot of anxiety who writes because I get story ideas that won't leave me alone and not for specific ships, to have to keep defending this to people who are upset about what ship they think is going to be endgame.
> 
> With that, here’s the Barchie date. You have been warned.

Archie walks Betty back to her house when her hand is done icing, one of his hands hovering against the small of her back, and all she can think is, _I’m going on a date with Archie, I’m going on a date with Archie,_. She feels terrified and confused and excited all at once, a swirl of emotions that make her lightheaded.

Part her feels like this has all been, well, inevitable. Betty Cooper and Archie Andrews, childhood sweethearts, milkshakes at Pop’s and doing homework at the Andrews’ kitchen table and playing adventurers in their backyards for hours. Archie, the boy next door, the one she always thought was meant to be until she stood there at fifteen, her heart in her hands, and he walked away, he walked away from her and her love like she was just another part of his childhood he had outgrown. But there’s another part of her that feels like she’s jumping off a cliff, a compass spinning endlessly and she’s dizzy, leaning up against the wall when they get to the back door of her house.

“The scene of the crime,” Archie says wryly.

She looks up at him and freezes, her back against the wall, body flooding with a dual rush of shame and arousal that makes her stomach tighten. “Arch.”

His expression darkens, swallows audibly as he moves a little closer to her, one hand reaching out to open the door for her. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

She lets out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

She makes it to the doorway before she whirls around and throws her arms around his neck. His arms wrap around her back immediately and Betty presses her face into that little space between his shoulder and neck that feels like it was made just for her, breathing him in.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. I’ll text you when I’m up tomorrow. You should go in, you need to catch up on sleep.”

She sighs and forces herself to pull away. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He gives her a soft smile. “Night, Betty.”

She does her best to smile back. “Night.”

She goes inside and locks the door behind her, quietly pads through the dark kitchen and into the empty living room, freezing when the front door opens and Jughead comes in.

“Hey.” He squints at her, kicking the door shut with his foot. “What were you doing?”

“Getting some water,” she lies. “How was the party?”

“Huh?” He shrugs out of his jacket, shooting her a quizzical look.

Betty wraps her arms around her waist. “Our - my mom and your dad - said you went to a party at Thornhill.”

He winces slightly. “Yeah, I just made up an excuse to get out of the house. I couldn’t… be here. I was writing in the bunker.”

“Oh,” she whispers.

“I’m going to bed,” he announces.

She nods. “Okay.”

When he starts retreating up the stairs she calls out, “Goodnight,” but he doesn’t answer.

Betty presses her forehead against the wall and just breathes, waits until she’s sure he’s made it to his room before she follows him upstairs.

*

After Archie makes sure Betty gets inside safely he goes back to his house and paces around in his room, curtains closed so Betty can’t see him freaking out, wondering what the hell compelled him to ask her out on an actual date. He hadn’t meant to, but she’d said that she loved him and it was like he was eight years old again, asking Betty to marry him and he’d meant it at the time, as much as an eight year old can anyway. To him she’d been like an angel, patient and nice and glowing in the sunlight, someone he’d looked up to even though they were the same age because she made everything look so easy and did it with smile, the picture of grace, and he’d always envied that, the way she seemed so much more refined and mature than him. But she was tough too, she’d get dirty with him playing on the banks of Sweetwater River, liked cars and running and one time in sixth grade she punched Reggie Mantle right in the face because he made fun of Kevin’s pink tee shirt.

How could he not love someone like that, a girl who was always there with a kind word and a gentle smile and soft hands, a girl who knew more about cars and bugs and politics than anyone else in their grade, a girl who sacrificed her time helping him read so he wouldn’t get held back? 

But by the time they were sophomores something had changed, he guesses, although he didn’t really realize it until later. It wasn’t like he’d stopped loving Betty or anything like that. He still had the idea in his head that they’d end up together, get married and have cute strawberry blond kids and live in a house he and his dad would renovate together, so what was the rush, when he was only fifteen and nowhere near ready for that kind of commitment?

He thought he had time. He thought they all had so much time, before Jason Blossom was found with a bullet in his head.

But if he’s learned anything the past few years, it’s that they’re all on borrowed time. He thought his dad would live forever, naive maybe, but true. He thought he would make Riverdale better but all he’s done has gotten deeper and deeper into it (juvie and that fucking bear and his serpant tattoo and street brawls and the red circle and Veronica’s face this morning, like she could barely bring herself to look at him, like he was the biggest disappointment of her life).

Archie thought he and Veronica were solid, would never have guessed that he’d destroy the longest relationship with a woman he’s ever had over Betty’s swinging ponytail and her tears, turn his back on a girl who could’ve been with anyone and chose him, a girl who was new and shiny when she mysteriously arrived, whipsmart and sharp and always dressed to kill, loyal and strong and passionate.

Veronica, smiling over her shoulder at him as they’d gone upstairs the first time they hooked up, Veronica’s hands sliding down his naked body in the shower, Veronica sobbing on the phone when he’d taken off last year, Veronica on her back with his head between her legs as she cursed in two languages and pulled his hair, Veronica in the parking lot at Pop’s, getting into her car and not looking back.

He thinks about texting her, maybe because it’s automatic still, to get his phone out to talk to her, but he can’t think of anything to say. _I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to hurt you? Hey, how mad at me would you be if I took Betty, the girl I semi-cheated on you with, on a date?_

He snorts to himself. Please.

Archie runs a hand through his hair and goes over to his desk to plan out his date with Betty. Because he’s going on a date with Betty. Because why not, he thinks sarcastically. Everything else about senior year has been unpredictable and batshit crazy, he might as well just surrender to it.

*

In the morning Betty wakes up to a text from Archie at eighty-thirty. She rubs her eyes and rolls over to swipe her phone open and read his text: _Ready to go in half an hour?_

_There better be coffee,_ she texts back.

He replies with a winky face emoji and Betty sighs, tosses her phone onto her bed, and gets ready for her first real grown up date with the boy next door she’s loved for years.

He didn’t tell her where they were going but it’s a Sunday morning and it’s Archie, she isn’t anticipating anything too upscale. She does her hair in its usual ponytail and then immediately takes it down, and stares at her reflection in the mirror. She doesn’t know what to do with her hair, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to get too dolled up, make a big deal out of it. It’s just her and Archie, she wants to look the way she normally does.

It’s easier when she can pretend to be the fifteen year old version of herself, when being with him was fun and easy, before he broke her heart. But she’s not that girl anymore, and part of her wants him to know it. She’s eighteen now, what she feels for Archie is so different from the childhood crush she used to have. She isn’t a virginal teenage girl anymore, she’s a young woman.

She wants to look pretty for him. She wants him to think she looks pretty.

She brushes the front section of her hair back from her face and secures it in a high pony, and curls the rest of hair so it bounces around her shoulders. She does light makeup; mascara and lipgloss, and concealer around her eyes to cover up how irritated they are from crying so much yesterday. She stares in her face in the mirror, remembering that night when she was fifteen, getting ready to go to Pop’s, how hopeful she was, how excited.

How badly she misses that girl, whose biggest problem was getting the boy next door to notice her the way she wanted him to.

She changes clothes, pulls on a cream colored tee shirt with pale purple stripes over the chest and a pair of denim shorts edged with cream eyelet trim. She puts on a pair of blue canvas flats and grabs her mini backpack, fills it with sunglasses, her wallet and phone, and a tube of sunscreen just in case they’re outside for a while.

When she goes into the hallway it’s quiet, Betty must be the first one up. She quietly goes down the stairs and picks up her keys from the dish, leaves a note for her mom that she went out, and slips outside. Archie’s waiting for her at the bottom of the porch steps, wearing a pair of faded jeans and a hunter green tee shirt. He looks good but Archie always looks good, and for the first time today Betty’s really nervous, her stomach tightening as she makes sure the front door is locked before waking down the steps to him.

“Hey.” Archie smiles at her and it’s breathtaking, the way it makes his face light up. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Betty squints and gets her sunglasses out of her backpack. “Where are we going exactly?”

His smile broadens. “It’s a surprise.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

He laughs. “Don’t worry, I think you’ll like it.”

They walk over to his parked truck and Archie unlocks it before opening the passenger door for her. “Thanks,” she murmurs, setting her backpack down on the floor before buckling up.

Archie shuts her door and jogs around to get into the driver’s side. He grabs a pair of wayfarers from the cup holder and puts them on before starting the car. “Hey,” he says. “By the way, you look really pretty.”

Betty’s heart leaps into her throat. “Thank you.”

Archie turns the radio up and pulls into the street. Betty rolls her window down, it’s a perfect warm spring morning and the air smells fresh and green, she’s going on a date, and Archie Andrews thinks she’s pretty.

If fifteen year old her could see Betty now.

She’s surprised when Archie doesn’t start driving towards Pop’s but towards the outskirts of town. “Arch, where are we going?”

“I thought you wanted coffee.”

“Is there a reason we have to go this far for coffee?”

“It’s on the way.”

“The way to what?”

Archie smiles. “You’ll see.”

Betty leans back in her seat and looks out the window, watching her town drop away as Archie approaches the highway and signals to merge onto it. She has absolutely no idea where Archie is taking them and there’s a part of her that’s starting to buzz with excitement at getting to spend the day with him, alone, away from judgemental eyes. She doesn’t figure out what’s going on until he exits off the highway and pulls into the parking lot of a little diner across the street from a gas station.

“No way,” Betty breathes as he swings the truck into an open spot. “Are we going where I think we’re going?”

Archie rolls the windows up and turns off the truck. “Don’t worry, I double checked this morning. They opened Friday.”

“We’re going to the fair?” she asks tremulously.

When they were kids Archie’s dad took them to this fair a few towns over from Greendale every spring, and they always stopped at this diner on the way there for breakfast. It was a tradition, the kind of thing they did every year until eight grade, when Archie and Betty decided they were too old for something so babyish. They spent the summer at the pool lifeguarding instead, sitting in canvas chairs wearing regulation red swimsuits they both looked terrible in.

“Yeah.” Archie unbuckles his seatbelt. “What do you think?”

Betty blinks back tears behind her sunglasses. “I think you’re really good at first dates.”

He slides his sunglasses off and winks at her before getting out. Betty grabs her backpack and hops down from the truck, and Archie’s already coming around to shut her door for her.

“When was the last time we were here?” she asks him as they walk towards the entrance. “Summer before seventh grade?”

“I don’t know.” Archie gets to the door first and holds it open for her. “I just remember how crushed my dad was when we told him we didn’t want to go anymore.”

“Yeah,” she sighs sadly, and walks inside.

Everything looks just how she remembers it, fresh white paint and blond wood and red and white checked upholstery. Archie walks up to the hostess stand and they’re led to a booth over by the windows by a skinny girl a few years younger than Betty with braces and frizzy hair.

“This is just like I remembered it,” Archie says, glancing down at the laminated menu.

“Yeah, me too.” Betty gives him a shy smile. 

“I hope this is okay.” To Betty’s surprise he looks a little shy, too. “I wanted to make it special ‘cus it’s our first, you know, grown up date” -

“A little different that our backyard dates with cheese sticks and juice boxes back in elementary school,” she jokes.

He grins. “Yeah. But I didn’t want to go too fancy and make it weird either, I just wanted it to be…”

“Normal?”

“Yeah.”

Betty reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. “It’s perfect.”

“Really?” he asks hopefully.

It’s cute, how much he cares about what she thinks, like he’s being graded or something. “Yeah.” 

When their waitress comes they both order coffee and blueberry pancakes. Betty knows her mother would lose it if she found out Betty was starting her day off with a sugar rush but it’s what she always ordered when they used to come here and besides, today is special.

She’s on a date.

To her relief, whatever nerves she and Archie have don’t make anything too awkward. They talk about the schoolwork Archie’s still catching up on because he never really recovered from his absence last year, what they think the prom theme will be, the new book Betty’s reading. It feels like it always does when they’re hanging out, like she’s with her friend who’s known her forever, easy and comfortable.

It’s nice. It’s so much better than going on a date with a stranger; she still has jitters but not in a bad way. It’s like butterflies, beautiful and warm and fluttering under her skin.

When their coffee comes Betty stirs a little bit of cream into hers while watching Archie dump in two packets of Equal into his and start drinking before it can start to cool down. Betty wraps her hands around her mug, watching the cream swirl around. “Can I ask you something?”

Archie blows on his coffee. “Sure.”

“Can we make a deal?”

“What kind of deal?”

“Whatever happens between us… promise we’ll stay friends?”

“Hey.” Archie winks at her over the rim of his mug. “I’m always going to be your friend, okay?”

Betty smiles and takes a sip of her coffee. “Okay.”

*

They get to the fair by mid morning; Archie steers the truck through the dirt parking lot until he finds an empty space and pulls into it. He turns off the engine and he and Betty climb out, both of them leaving their sunglasses on because it’s a perfect day, sunny and clear, a cloudless blue sky above them and fields of green grass stretching out across the parking lot, dotted with colorful booths and streamers and rising in the distance, the Ferris wheel.

Myaybe it’s dumb but Archie feels crazy nervous about taking Betty on an actual date, because he’s not exactly batting a four hundred when it comes to relationships. He’s made just about every mistake a person can make, he’s left a trail of tears and Veronica’s broken heart behind him and he’s terrified he’ll mess up again, like he always does.

But there’s this small, quiet part of him that’s calm, content in a way he doesn’t feel a lot, something that he imagines might feel a little bit like peace.

Because it’s _Betty_.

Betty, whose hair bounces in soft curls around her shoulders as she walks next to him, fingers looped around the straps of her backpack, the girl he proposed to in second grade. The girl who loved him before he ever thought he deserved that kind of devotion or worship, back when he just a stupid fifteen year old kid who wasn’t even interested in that kind of love yet. He wanted to learn to drive, play football, go to parties. 

He wanted to fuck his teacher in her car while his best friend stared out her window at his empty room pining for him and he didn’t even care. 

When they get to the entrance Archie pulls out his wallet and buys two entrance tickets before Betty can even think about paying for herself because at least his dad taught him some things before he died.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, giving him a soft smile.

“No problem.” Archie slings his arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, what do you want to do first?”

Betty tentatively wraps her arm around his waist, like she isn’t sure it’s okay for her to do it. “I don’t know.”

“Want me to win you a teddy bear?”

Betty laughs. “Yeah, okay.”

“Hey, my aim is a lot better than it was when I was twelve!”

“Sure it is,” she teases him.

“Just for that I’m going to win you _two_ teddy bears.”

“Someone’s feeling cocky today.” He looks down at her at the same moment she looks up at him and he watches as her cheeks flood with color.

He chuckles a little and squeezes her shoulder. “Guess so.”

They find one of those old arcade games where if you throw a baseball at a metal plate hard enough a metal bar shoots up a tube and hits a bell at the top. Archie pays three bucks for a round of six balls and picks up the first ball.

“Start thinking about what bear you want,” he tells her, pointing to the pile of stuffed animals up on the top shelf.

“You know you’re not actually a baseball player, right?” Betty jokes.

“Hey, I play football, what’s the difference? It’s the same skill set.”

“They’re two completely different sports,” Betty laughs.

“Ball, hand-eye coordination, strength,” he argues. “How hard could it be?”

“Alright then, killer.” Betty grins at him. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

On his first throw he barely hits the plate, sending the metal bar merely a few feet up before it sinks back down. “That was the warm up,” he tells Betty.

“Of course,” she says graciously.

On the second throw he hits the plate hard enough that the bar goes almost all the way to the top, and he grins at Betty as he picks up the next ball. “See, I told you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, but she’s smiling.

Archie winds up, focuses on his target, and throws the ball right at the center of the plate. The metal bar shoots straight up the tube and hits the bell, which shrieks and sets off a string of flashing red lights.

“You did it!” Betty squeals and grabs onto his arm.

Archie feels prouder than when he threw his first ever touchdown pass. The kid working behind the counter collects the balls on the floor and tells Archie to pick out his prize. Archie glances down at Betty, who gives him a delighted smile and points to a soft looking beige teddy bear with a pink heart sewn over its chest. The guy behind the counter gets it down for them and hands it to Archie, who gives it to Betty with a flourish.

She looks up at him with big eyes as she holds the bear to her chest. “I love it.” 

He goes all warm inside, at seeing her smile, how happy she is with something so little. “Good.”

“Thank you,” she says softly.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders. “And you thought I couldn’t do it.”

“I didn’t say that!” Betty protests with a giggle.

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry that I ever doubted you.” Betty smirks up at him. “Is your ego satisfied now?”

“For now.” He gives her shoulder a little squeeze. “Come on, what do you wanna do now?”

They find another game to play, the one where they shoot at ducks with water guns, and Archie hits so many in a row that he wins Betty another teddy bear, pale lavender with little white paws that’s almost ridiculously adorable. 

“Show off,” she says cheerfully, holding a bear up to each cheek and smiling while he takes a picture of her.

“C’mere, you’re so cute,” he says, not even in a flirtatious way, just an honest moment of adoration, and Betty melts.

“Thank you for asking me on a date.” Betty tucks the bears under one elbow so she can hug him.

He wraps one arm around her shoulders and the other around her back, feeling the heat of her skin through her tee shirt. “Thanks for saying yes.”

“I’m having a good time,” she murmurs.

“That’s ‘cus I’m bribing you with teddy bears,” Archie stage whispers, and Betty laughs and laughs.

He keeps waiting to feel guilty as he and Betty walk around the fair, his arm slung around her shoulders, her little backpack stuffed with the prizes he won for her, but it doesn’t happen. He still has Veronica in the back of his mind and it’s weird for him to have gone a whole twenty-four hours without talking to her, even weirder when he thinks about the fact that last week they were together and now he’s on a date with her best friend. His best friend. Their best friend.

God, does Archie hate triangles.

He talks Betty into hot dogs for lunch, the kind that come in red and white cardboard containers. They eat them at a picnic table, watching a group of kids at the next booth get their faces painted. Betty eats her hot dog with the gusto of someone who’s been starving all week, like it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted, and he gets a memory flash of Mrs. Cooper when they were kids, yelling at Polly for drinking whole milk instead of skim while Betty and Archie sat frozen at the kitchen table.

“Think you’ve got room for ice cream?” he asks Betty when they’re finished, pointing over to the ice cream stand set up next to a kiddie pool full of plastic fish.

“I shouldn’t,” she says wistfully. “My mom would kill me.”

“I won’t tell her,” he promises. “C’mon, it’s not like she’ll know.”

“Okay,” Betty agrees hesitantly, but she’s smiling.

She even orders what she used to get when they were kids, a double scoop of strawberry with rainbow sprinkles in a waffle cone. He gets two scoops of chocolate peanut butter chunk in a sugar cone and eats it fast before the ice cream can start to melt while Betty slowly licks her cone next to him as they walk past stands selling cotton candy and snow cones and lemonade. Every few seconds she twists the cone to lick up drops of melting ice cream and he can’t look away, watching her pink tongue dart out to get pink drops of melting ice cream because Betty is always pinkpinkpink and he feels a little dizzy, imagining that tongue licking up something else.

When they’re finished, licking their fingers clean and wiping them off with napkins, Betty smiles at him wistfully. “I should probably be back before dinner.”

Archie nods, disappointed, but he gets it, his mom probably won’t be thrilled he disappeared all day either. “Anything you want to do before we head out?”

Betty looks over at a stand selling temporary tattoos. “What do you think, Andrews?”

Archie grins. “I’ve already got ink, what’s a little more?”

They walk over to the stand and skim through the book of tattoos. They flip past animals and smiley faces and astrological signs until they come to a page full of hearts. Archie grins, pointing to a glittery pink heart, and Betty starts to laugh.

“No way,” she giggles.

“Yes way!”

She hip bumps him, gentle and teasing. “You’re so cheesy.”

“It’s called being romantic.”

She bites her lip but then she smiles. “Only if you get one too.”

“Okay,” he agrees easily.

“Since you picked mine…” Betty taps her fingers to her lips as she pursues the page and points to the biggest red heart they have. “That one.”

He laughs. “Okay. Whatever you want.”

He gets his done first, on his shoulder, while Betty watches, lips pressed together in a small smile. When the woman is finished Archie flexes his arm at Betty, who smirks and raises one eyebrow at him.

“I know where I want mine.” Betty pops the button of her shorts and rolls down the waistband, points to her right hip bone. “Here.”

Archie dies a little inside. “Hot.”

Betty looks thrilled with that assessment. “Thank you.”

He watches as she gets it put on and it's almost too much, the beat of the sun and sugar on his tongue and the pale curve of Betty’s exposed hip as a woman presses in onto her skin and holds a wet cloth over it for a moment before taking it away, revealing a small pink heart nestled against her hip bone, glittering like a mirrorball in the sun.

Betty thanks the woman and leaves the waistband of her shorts rolled down as she angles her hip toward him. “Do you like it?” she asks quietly, shy and tentative.

As if he’d be crazy enough to say no.

He has to jam hands in his pocket so he can’t cup his hand around her hip and trace the tattoo. “It’s perfect.”

She’s standing right in front of him, chin tipped slightly up, the perfect angle for a kiss and it would be so easy, to rest a hand on her waist and tip his head down but Betty takes a step back, looking away as she shoulders her backpack, and the spell is broken.

“We should start heading to the car,” she says. “We’ll probably hit traffic on the way back and my mom will hit the roof if I miss dinner.”

“Okay,” he agrees gently, wondering where she just went, if she got spooked or flooded by a wave of guilt or something else, but he can tell by her body language (shoulders rounded, lips pressed together) that she doesn’t want to talk about so he just drapes an arm around her shoulders. “Whatever you want.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who is supporting this fic - your kudos and comments mean the world to me <3

Archie gets them home a little before dinner time; at golden hour, the light making everything around them soft and dappled. He walks Betty up to the bottom of her front steps, lingering with one hand on her hip. She feels it again, the fire inside of her that lights up at his touch, and she stares up at him, lost, part of her wanting to follow that feeling straight to hell and the other part of her so terrified she’s almost frozen.

And then Archie smiles at her, and she melts.

“Did you have a good time?” he asks, and in her eyes he’s six years old again, shyly holding a wildflower out to her.

“Yes,” she answers softly. “Thank you for taking me.”

His smile deepens and he cups her cheek with his hand. “Thanks for saying yes.”

“So, I’ll, um, see you at school tomorrow?” She can barely focus, her attention held between the two fixed points of his palms.

“Betty.”

He’s looking down at her and she can’t move, she can’t do anything other than stare up at him. “Yes?”

“Is it too early to kiss you?” he murmurs.

Betty stares up at the face of the boy she’s loved since she was a child and involuntary glances back at the house where she lives with her mom and her ex-boyfriend and his dad and younger sister. Behind her front door is something like a family rebuilt from the ashes and Betty hates herself a little bit, for not trying anymore, for quitting on what she knows is her mom’s dream for them - to be a family again.

But she’s tired of pretending. Pretending that she doesn’t miss Polly like a piece of her heart has been ripped from her chest. Pretending that seeing F.P. sitting at her father’s place at the table doesn’t make her irrationally, intensely angry. What is this man doing here, in her house, where the ghost of her father haunts every room?

The house she lit on fire, the house the Jones bought. The house where a man died on the kitchen floor.

“Betty?”

She startles, caught a little off balance as she whips her head back to him. “Sorry. What?”

A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

“I…” Betty tries to swallow but her throat feels tight. “I just…” To her horror she realizes she’s on the verge of tears. “Sorry, I’m just like, really overwhelmed right now.”

His expression softens as he wraps his arms around her and bends low so his lips brush her ear. “Did I knock you out with how romantic I can be?”

She laughs weakly, pressing her face into his chest. “Maybe.”

“It’s okay.” His fingers trail up and down her back. “We can go slow.”

Betty takes a deep breath and pulls out of the hug. “There is no _we_ , Archie. We went on a date, we’re not dat _ing_.”

He only gives her an amused smile. “What are you gonna do next, tell me not to fall in love with you?”

Something in her stomach tightens. “I’m serious, Archie. I don’t think I handle that, I told you I didn’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend right now. If you’re making bets I wouldn’t bet on me.”

He slides one hand around the back of her neck, thumb slipping into that hollow under her ear, and Betty goes boneless. “That’s up to me,” he whispers. “You don’t get to tell me who I bet on, okay?”

“Okay,” she says thickly, trying not to cry.

His thumb runs along her jaw, making her shiver. “Can I walk you to school tomorrow?”

“Yes, please,” she breathes, responding on autopilot, her cheeks flushing.

He drops a kiss on the top of her head. “Okay. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

She smiles up at him. “Okay.”

He waits on the sidewalk while she goes up the stairs, waves goodbye to her when she holds up a hand before letting herself inside and quietly shutting the door behind her.

*

Archie escapes to his room as soon as he goes inside, yelling at his mom from the foyer that he’s going to take a shower and change when he hears her moving around in the kitchen. As soon as he’s in the safety of his own space he collapses on his bed, groaning, wondering what the hell is wrong with him for asking Betty if he could kiss her already, like they both weren’t officially dumped yesterday. Why does he always have to be so impulsive, so aggressive with his desires, why does he always take what he wants and doesn’t feel guilty about it? Or at least, not in the moment anyway.

His stomach contracts when he realizes that he’s thinking about himself as the kind of person who is like _her_ , Grundy: charming, seductive, manipulative.

Dangerous.

He knows he’s pushing it with Betty, has been since that night by her back door, when all she’d done was move slightly toward him and that had been enough for him to pin her against the wall, overwhelmed by the uncontrollable urge to - what was that, anyway? More than just desire, or arousal, more than simply sex.

He wanted to be _with_ her again, be Archie and Betty, wanted to go back to that part of his life - sunshine and bubblegum pink and blond waves, live in that old fantasy about them again, before things got so fucked up, before his dad died, before barely surviving juvie, before his ex-girlfriend’s dad framed him for murder, before he lay down in the dirt because he’d do anything for Betty, before he watched Jason Blossom get shot in the head.

Before he was seduced by his music teacher. Assaulted. Whatever. 

He doesn’t like thinking about Grundy that way. It makes him feel sick inside, dirty, like what she did, the way she treated him, all the things he thought were special (she chose him, she could’ve chosen anyone but she wanted _him_ ) weren’t special at all. He was just a boy, prey for a hungry predator who had an eye for pretty young teenagers. He wasn’t special. He was just a thing, a toy, another name in her phone. She was a grown woman who knew (she must have known, right?) that it was wrong. That what they were doing was wrong. But she had him wrapped around her finger, he thought he knew what he was doing but really he was not much more than a puppet, reacting to his strings being pulled by a cunning woman ( _woman_ ) who knew what she wanted and how to get it. Unapologetically.

He’s just the idiot who thought she really liked him. But deep down, he knew it was wrong too. The same way he knew it was wrong in that split second moment before he and Veronica kissed in the closet at Cheryl’s after party that night, _we shouldn’t do this_ , Veronica had whispered, and he’d agreed, and kissed her anyway.

Because he wanted to. Because he didn’t care if it was wrong. And neither did Veronica and maybe that’s why he wanted it, because she wasn’t like Betty, she wasn’t some angel he’d had on a pedestal his whole life, someone he knew he could have but didn’t deserve. Veronica made him feel like it was okay to want her, even if it was wrong, those big eyes looking up at him in the dim light, a rare vulnerability in them, and those painted lips and her hand around his tie, how could he have not been enraptured by her, overwhelmed by her? 

He wanted her, and she wanted him back. Simple as that. 

It could have been so simple, if he hadn’t loved Betty too, if his love for Veronica wasn’t entangled in his feeling for Betty, their romantic histories forever intertwined by the way it happened, when he took two girls to a dance and he could’ve chose Betty but instead chose Veronica, it was always Veronica, when it wasn’t Grundy or Val or Josie, but not Betty.

It was never Betty, except for that one night outside Thornhill in the car and that was different, that was the kind of decision you make when you know death is so close you can feel its shadow at your back, when everything matters and you’re up against a killer and you’re losing and your best friend is being tortured by a violent psychopath and you’re so scared so you kiss her and maybe it’s not the right thing to do objectively but you know in this moment it’s right because your heart will always know hers and she’s crying into your mouth and it’s okay, because her tears are precious pearls made from a body that you’ll lay your life down to defend, you will always play the knight to her princess even though you aren’t children anymore, because that's what it means to love someone.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of her, Betty Cooper in a white cardigan over her pretty pink dress, eyes full of tears, asking him _why?_ Why, when he loved her, didn’t he want to be with her? 

And he’d stood there and told her it was because she was perfect. Because he was never going to be able to live up to such perfection, because he was fifteen and an idiot, who wrote off the girl he’d loved his whole life because she was _too_ perfect, as if anyone could actually be perfect anyway, but that’s what he thought of her back then, she was pure, pink perfection and he thought he would ruin her.

Maybe he never really saw her at all. Maybe he was just an idiot who sabotaged getting what he wanted because he wouldn’t let himself believe that he was worthy of it. 

Maybe deep down he’s still that fifteen year old kid, tortured inside, agonizing over who to love and what path to follow and he’s just as lost as he always was. And maybe that’s why he’s being pulled back to Betty, because she was the sun that rose every morning, her love for him easy and warm and constant and no matter how far away he got from her, how bad things seemed, he always found his way back to her in the end, following the tug of his heart until she appeared, that hair glowing like a halo in the night like some dark angel. 

Betty, shining like a lighthouse, just for him.

*

Inside her house, Betty rushes up the stairs and makes it to her room before anyone sees her. She shuts her door and leans her back against it, dropping her backpack to the floor as the day flashes through her mind, skin buzzing where Archie touched her.

Her heart is beating so fast.

She takes a shaky breath and kicks off her shoes, reaches up and pulls her hair tie out. She tips her head upside down, shakes her hair out and secures it into a ponytail at the crown of her head. She grabs her phone from her backpack, slips it into the pocket of her shorts, goes out of her room to head down to dinner and walks right into Jughead.

“Sorry!” Jughead steps back from her instantly and drops his arms so he doesn’t touch her, like she’s radioactive.

“Hey.” Betty presses one hand to her chest, her heart fluttering painfully. “Did you, um, want something?”

“Yeah.” He looks around furtively, like he’s worried someone is listening in on them. “I think we should tell them.”

“Tell who what?”

“Our - your mom and my dad. About us.”

Betty’s stomach drops. “What do you want to tell them?”

“The party line. We still love each other but we want to have the freedom to live it up for the rest of our senior year. I think it might help if we lean into the practical fact that I’m going to Iowa now” -

“You got into Iowa?” She stares at him, her heart shriveling up because he got into college and he didn’t tell her. There was no moment, no anticipation of him ripping the envelope open, no hungry eyes reading a letter that determines the next four years of their future -

“Yeah. The letter came Friday,” he says shortly. 

“Congratulations,” she offers weakly. “Um, what were you saying before?”

“Oh, that we can sort of use that - we’d be doing long distance in the fall anyway, we’re testing being apart, some bullshit like that.”

“Oh,” she whispers. “Okay.”

“I was thinking after dinner? Rip the bandaid off?”

“Alright,” she agrees, because she knows they have to do it eventually so they might as well get it over with. 

They go downstairs together and sit down at opposite sides of the table, make small talk while her mother serves everyone spinach salad and rosemary chicken. Betty picks at her food, unable to concentrate on anything except for her impending doom. She has no idea how her mother is going to react which is stressful but what’s really bothering her is that after this, it’s real - she and Jughead will really be officially over.

She cuts her chicken up into minuscule bites, eats a couple and pushes the rest around her plate, her stomach in knots. She doesn’t want to do this and it occurs to her that if their parents weren’t living together she wouldn’t have to. It’s hard, not having any boundaries now that they all live together. Betty doesn’t understand it, how easily her mother has adjusted to this. It’s like she’s forgotten that only a few years ago Betty’s father was still her father and Polly was a part of their family, because they were a family, a perfect matching set: two parents, two daughters. 

Or maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe Betty should be asking herself why she’s the only one who’s having such a hard time adjusting to it.

She can’t help it though. She misses her old life, when she had a dad and an older sister and Archie was her best friend, back before anything bad had ever happened to her, before her parents sent Polly away, before Betty started hurting herself, before Jason Blossom died, before she gave Archie her tender fifteen year old heart, full of hope and promise, standing in her pink dress at the dance waiting for him while he was talking to _her_ , back when Betty thought Grundy was just his teacher, before he kissed Veronica, before he told Betty she was perfect like it was a bad thing and she’d been so hurt that she couldn’t come up with words so she’d turned around on the sidewalk and walked away.

Betty rests her head in her hands and blinks back tears. She walked away from Jughead too, and he hadn’t done anything to deserve it.

Jughead had loved her and she’d taken that love and handed it right back to him, just like Archie did to her. She’s just as bad as he is. She even had the same pathetic reasoning - because she wasn’t as good as Jughead, she didn’t deserve him, so she slammed the door on their love.

Because for all of Archie’s claims that Betty was perfect, it turns out that she’s just as fucked up as he is. Just another idiotic teenager who doesn’t know what she wants either.

“Elizabeth, what are you doing?” Her mother's voice makes Betty’s teeth hurt.

“I don’t feel good,” Betty mumbles into her hands.

“You’re at dinner with your family, can you at least use your manners? Get your elbows off my table.”

Betty rubs the heels of her hands into her eyes for a minute before folding them into her lap, nails instinctively finding her palms. “I don’t want to do this.”

Her mother gives her a baffled look. “What?”

She meets Jughead’s gaze. “I don’t want to do this.”

A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Betty” -

“I can’t. I’m sorry,” she chokes out, and starts to cry.

“Elizabeth!” Her mom glares at Jughead. “What on earth is going on?”

“Can you just do it?” she begs Jughead. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, let’s just get it over with.”

“Alright kids, it’s about time one of you starts talking,” FP says sternly.

Jughead sighs loudly and stares up at the ceiling. “We broke up.”

FP coughs. “What?”

“We broke up,” Jughead repeats miserably.

“When?” Her mother asks.

“Yesterday,” Betty sobs, covering her face with her hands.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” her mother cries.

“We are telling you,” Jughead says tightly. “This is us telling you.”

“What happened?” her mother gasps.

“Mom, come on, we literally broke up yesterday, do we have to talk about the details?” Betty pleads. 

“It was a… mutual decision,” Jughead adds.

“So you broke up, and you don’t want to talk about it?” FP asks.

“Pretty much,” Jughead answers.

“May I be excused please?” Betty sniffs.

“Elizabeth,” her mother sighs.

“What? This is humiliating!” Betty cries. “It’s bad enough we have to live together” -

“Don’t be rude,” her mother snaps.

“I’m not being rude, I’m trying to tell you how I feel!”

“I’m going out,” Jughead announces, standing up and dropping his napkin on the table.

“Jug,” Betty starts, but he waves her off.

“It’s fine, I’m not in the mood for an interrogation either.” He glares at his dad for a moment. “See you at school tomorrow, Betty.”

She watches him leave and then she stands up too. “I have to go get ready for school.”

“Elizabeth” -

“Mom, I don’t want to talk about this anymore! We broke up, okay? There’s nothing to talk about.” Betty doesn’t wait for her mother to excuse her before walking out and going upstairs to her room.

She slams her door shut and cries into her hands for a few minutes before getting around to turning on the light. She sniffs and blows her nose, yanks her ponytail out and runs her hands through her hair, fingers digging into the tight muscles at the back of her neck. She has to pack up her backpack for tomorrow and lay out her clothes, she starts to walk over to her closet and glances out the window without really even meaning to.

Archie’s curtains are shut.

*

Archie sits on the edge of his bed that night, ready for bed with his phone balanced on his thigh. The light is off and his curtains are shut, the only light source is from his phone screen as he tries to figure out what to text Veronica.

He knows he’s not really supposed to contact her but it’s been thirty-six hours since he’s talked to her and he feels like he’s going into withdrawal. He misses her, her sharp wit and her sage advice and her smile, and the idea of her hating him makes him feel like crying. He feels like a disappointment, someone she’s probably ashamed of, and all he wants to do is fix it but he can’t, because how does he fix something like loving her best friend?

He finally types, _Hey._ And then sits there for a few minutes before adding, _I’m sorry. You don’t have to text me back. I just want you to know I’m sorry I hurt you._

He hits _send_ before he can talk himself out of it and sits there in agony as the _Delivered_ notification pops up. He stays where he is, staring at his phone, holding his breath, as the notification changes to _Read_. He keeps his eyes on his screen, praying for grey dots, but after ten minutes he realizes that Veronica probably left him on read, and puts his phone down.

He thinks about checking through to the curtains to see if Betty’s still up and shuts the thought down right away. He has to keep his shit together, he has school tomorrow, he has to stop obsessing over both of them. He still hasn’t dropped the bomb on anyone that his mom wants him to join the Navy and he knows he has to figure out, well, his fucking life already, but - Betty and Veronica _are_ his life.

For a while he thought of them as opposing points on a line, Betty representing his past and Veronica his future. But now he’s starting to see it all as a circle, their love for each other intertwined in a beautiful mess of tangled feelings, time meaningless against the power of his feelings. He thinks about Veronica and he sees who they could have been and who they were all at once, the same way when he looks at Betty he sees both their shared childhood and possible future stretching out in both directions. Time is meaningless, his love for them transcends all rules about what should be possible, but it’s the truth. He loves them in ways that change and grow and maybe he’s just a coward who can’t make a real choice, but how can he know what choice to make if he never tries it with Betty too? 

He already chose Veronica once and he was supposed to live with that choice, the way people with honor do, with commitment and loyalty, honesty. He wasn’t supposed to back out, try to have more, game the system, refuse to make a real decision. But he did and even though it was wrong he doesn’t regret it because he doesn’t know if he can live with never knowing what he and Betty could have together, be together, and he knows that it’s fucked up that it took him this long to realize it, but that’s just what happened. He can’t change that.

Maybe that’s why he can’t seem to deal with his impending future, everything in front of him a looming question mark. Because he knows that his future is Betty, unless it’s Veronica, and until he figures _that_ out, nothing else really matters.


	12. Chapter 12

Betty’s eating cereal at the kitchen table before school by herself when someone rings the doorbell. She freezes, wondering what’s going on, remembering the fear every time a VHS tape would arrive on someone’s front porch, and a minute later her mother comes into the room, her arms crossed.

“Archie Andrews is here to walk you to school,” she announces flatly.

Betty carries her dishes to the sink and grabs her backpack where it’s hanging off the back of her chair, shrugs it on and quickly walks across the kitchen..

“Bye,” she says, ducking her head so she doesn’t have to look her mother in the eye. The last thing she’s in the mood to deal with is explaining the whole mess to her mom.

Archie’s waiting for her at the bottom of the steps outside, wearing a cream colored tee shirt with burgundy sleeves and a pair of jeans and goddamnit, he looks so cute, he always looks so cute, this would be so much easier if he… if he wasn’t Archie, wasn’t the first boy she ever loved, the boy she used to think she’d marry one day, the boy she thought really loved her before he rejected her for Grundy and Veronica and every pretty girl but her -

“Hey.” Archie smiles at her and she’s back in fantasy land, when she was fifteen and used to daydream about the dumbest things - holding his hand, wearing his football jacket, making out. “You ready?”

“Hey, yeah.” She scrambles down the steps, embarrassed at how easily she’s lost focus, just by looking at him.

When she meets him on the sidewalk he gives her a little wink as they start to walk. “You look cute.”

Betty chokes on air, flustered, she’s wearing a pink tee shirt tucked into a denim skirt and her hair in its usual high pony, nothing special. “Thank you.”

God, what is wrong with her? How can she forget everything like this, high on just one smile, one compliment? Since when does his opinion matter this much to her?

She’s not in love with Archie. She loves him, of course she loves him, and there’s always been a part of that love that’s been unrequited and locked up tight in a secret chamber inside her heart. But she isn’t in love with him, she isn’t obsessed, she doesn’t spend all her time fantasizing about him.

Well, unless agonizing over whether she should be him or Jughead counts as fantasizing.

She used to dream about it, the two of them, but she was so young, it was different back then. Her dreams were different, then.

She imagined him holding her hand, carrying her books to class. She daydreamed about his arm around her shoulder, school formals, chaste kisses and loving glances, because she was fifteen and innocent, a girl who’d never known more than the cotton candy sweetness of her own romantic longings.

She didn’t know back then, that love came in different flavors. That love could be found in the dark between two hurting people, that love and pain are not exclusive, that you can love someone and also hurt them. That love can be trembling and hot, that it can make you crazy, that she’s the kind of person who will do desperate, insane things for the people she loves, that she is the kind of girl who will burn the world down to avenge them.

She didn’t know that love could also be about power, control, about pushing each other’s boundaries, that love can make a person walk through hell and find only demons. That love takes you to unknown places, dark and glittering and mysterious, revealing secrets about yourself you didn’t even know you carried. That love was so much bigger and deeper than her teenage dream.

She hasn’t known at fifteen that there was so much more in the world than the Norman Rockwell picture she’d been living in. But now she does, she’s older and scarred and she’s had her heart broken, she’s seen people shot, people dive out windows, she’s seen evil in her father’s eyes, an evil that lives in her own DNA. 

She isn’t the kind of girl anyone should love.

But when she looks at Archie standing in front of her, her best friend for over a decade, she doesn’t analyze all those things the way she does when she’s alone. She doesn’t question herself, second guess the rightness of his body next to hers. She doesn’t torture herself with the memories of all the things she’s done, all the people she’s hurt.

It’s Archie. Regardless of their feelings for each other at any given time, there’s a rightness to being near him that never goes away.

Because of some level, deeper than deep, with their shared childhood and shared memories and bond that only the two of them will really understand, they belong to each other.

*

Betty is quiet as they walk to school and Archie can’t tell if it’s a good thing or not, if she’s feeling shy or nervous or what. He used to think he was good at reading Betty, right up to the moment she confessed her love for him and he realized they were on completely different pages about their relationship. He hadn’t kept up with her, hadn’t noticed the way she acted differently towards him until it was shoved in front of his face and he had to acknowledge it.

It bothers him a little, that in this way Betty is a mystery to him, that he can’t read her easily. It makes him more aware of how much they’ve changed since they were kids, how little he really understands her compared to the way he used to.

And also, the silence just unnerves him.

“How was your night?” he asks tentatively.

“Um… not great,” she offers. “Jughead and I told our parents we broke up.”

“Oh.” He glances sideways at her. “How was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t _know?_ ”

She shrugs. “I guess it’s a little awkward to talk to my best friend slash potential new love… something… about my ex-boyfriend slash his ex-best friend.”

What the fuck does _potential new love something_ mean?

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it,” Archie hedges.

“It just, uh, didn’t go that well,” she explains weakly.

“Oh.” He reaches up and scratches the back of his neck. “Sorry.”

She sighs. “It’s okay. It’s just, my mom, you know? She can never let me just live my life, she acts like every choice I make should be run past her first, like I can’t make decisions without her.”

He can’t really relate, his parents mostly left him to make his own choices about most things growing up - what clothes he wore, what activities he did, who he was friends with. He doesn’t know what it’s like for someone to try to control everything about his life.

“That sucks,” he says, and immediately feels stupid, it’s not exactly an astute observation, but Betty gives him a relieved smile.

“Exactly!” She throws her arms up in the air for a moment. “It sucks! That’s all I want, for someone to just acknowledge how much it sucks that I’m stuck in that house with her.”

“You can always hang out at my house,” he offers, without even thinking about it.

Betty offers him a shy smile. “Yeah?”

“Sure. It’s not like there’s anyone around really. Just me and my mom, when she isn’t at work.”

“Ah, so you’re saying we could be alone,” she teases gently.

“I didn’t mean it like that!” he laughs.

“Sure,” Betty giggles. “Sure, you didn’t.”

“Would that be a bad thing?” 

“What?”

“To hang out at my house alone.” He remembers Betty’s insistence last night, that they weren’t really dating, that this wasn’t going somewhere.

If he’s being honest with himself he thinks she’s full of shit, but he also knows that whatever is happening between the two of them is messy and came on fast and screwed a lot of stuff up, so he can understand her needing some time to adjust, too.

Betty blinks up at him. “No,” she says softly. “I don’t think it would be a bad thing.”

*

When they get to school she and Archie naturally separate a bit, walking into the building one after the other and immediately splitting up, lest it look like they came to school together. Betty’s hands shake at her sides as she rushes down the hall to her locker, head down so she doesn’t have to look at anyone. She really isn’t sure how Veronica and Jughead are going to act today and it makes her feel kind of sick, that two people she loves so much have been reduced to near strangers who will hopefully at least be civil to her in front of everyone else.

Betty changes her books at her locker on autopilot, imagining Jughead ignoring her all day, Veronica icing her out, the entire school gossiping about her.

It’s not like she hasn’t heard it before. People are generally nice to her face, the ones who remember when her family was considered a respected part of the community, but Betty knows what they say behind her back. That she’s crazy like her sister, that she’s a freak, a psychopath, a girl who tried to kill her boyfriend with a rock.

She sees Veronica walk past her on her way to homeroom, arm in arm with Cheryl as they talk, and Veronica’s eyes slide to her and for one moment she and Betty are locked together, everything else dissolving, and then Veronica gives her a cool little nod and looks away as she and Cheryl walk right by Betty, leaving her standing in the hallway feeling like she’s been seen and dismissed like she’s nothing more than a pathetic ghost of a person, unworthy of redemption.

She forgets about homeroom and goes to the girls’ bathroom instead. She’d rather hide in the Blue & Gold but it’s not safe there, it’s Jughead’s territory too and she can’t risk running into him, not like this. The bathroom’s empty anyway so she goes into a stall, curls up against the door, and cries into her knees.

The worst part is knowing that it’s all her fault, that none of this would’ve happened if she’d just talked to Jughead about how she’d been feeling when he came back. If she had explained it to him then, that nothing made her feel good anymore, that all she ever thought about was that night in the woods and his body and the fear, the rage she felt at Bret and Donna, the sick feeling in her stomach whenever she remembered that there was a sex tape of her out there. That when she looked at him she saw him dead at her hands and her dad was a killer and it was in her genes and she could’ve done it, for all she knew she really did it and only bad people have thoughts like that, people with danger in their blood.

She didn’t even try to tell him. Jughead was so happy to be home, high from their latest victory, and Veronica was busy trying to work out her college admission and her rum business with Cheryl, Kevin was doing who knows what, and Archie was… Archie was just sort of around. He’d helped her, he’d trusted her, he’d done everything she asked him and Veronica to do and it wasn’t like the line had blurred, Betty knew they were only pretending that night at Pop’s in front of Cheryl, kissing at school. It hadn’t been real, it had been a performance, part of her grand plan, they both understood that.

It was in the after that things started falling apart. The guilt and the hypervigilance and the self-doubt, the feeling that the next terrible thing is always right around the corner, the fear that she’ll never escape her father’s legacy. The visceral reactions to her memories, like her body had physically taken enough, can’t handle the constant loop of trauma she’s been on since Jason Blossom died anymore.

She wonders if she’s the only one who feels this way or if all of them do and she’s the only one who isn’t strong enough to handle it.

The bell rings and Betty goes rigid, shoving her fist against her mouth. A few girls come in and out of the bathroom but no one knocks on her stall and a few minutes late another bell rings to mark the end of the break between periods. A few minutes later her phone vibrates in the side pocket of her backpack and when Betty checks it she has a text from Jughead; she’s supposed to be in first period with him right now.

_Where are you? You’re late._

Betty stares at his text for a long time, trying to figure out what to tell him. _Leave me alone? I’m crying in the bathroom? Why do you care?_ Nothing sounds right.

Then she realizes that she isn’t his girlfriend anymore and she doesn’t have to respond, so she puts her phone on Do Not Disturb and zips it back in her backpack. 

Betty goes down to the nurse’s office and convinces her that she has a migraine, and the nurse leads Betty to a little cot against the wall in a corner of the office where the lights are off. Betty toes off her shoes and lays down on the cot, curling into a ball as she pulls the thin blue blanket around her. She closes her eyes and breathes slowly until she isn’t thinking anymore, just floating in the dark in the quiet room.

*

Archie sees Veronica in the hallway on his way to third period and he almost groans out loud because she looks _incredible_. Red sleeveless dress that’s tight _everywhere_ and lipstick to match, jewels glinting at her earlobes and her throat. She gives him the slightest nod, lips curled up in what could be considered a smirk.

“Archie,” she says in a cool voice, and breezes past him, leaving him in the middle of the hallway like a moron.

“Bro.” Reggie comes over and slings his arm around Archie’s shoulders. “I can’t believe you walked away from _that_.”

“I wasn’t with her just ‘cus she was hot,” Archie mumbles.

“I dated her too, you don’t have to extol Veronica Lodge’s many virtues to me.” Reggie grins. “But that ass doesn’t hurt.”

Archie elbows him in the ribs. “You’re being a dick.”

“Aw c’mon, no offense meant man. You know I’ve got nothing but love for V.”

“Whatever,” Archie grumbles. “I’m late.”

“Andrews man, seriously, don’t be mad bro!” Reggie calls after him as Archie walks away.

Jughead is in his next class; when Archie walks in he’s already there, beanie firmly in place, one booted foot crossed against the opposite thigh. He doesn’t look up as Archie drops into the seat behind him, feeling like an award jilted lover or something.

“Jug,” he whispers.

Jughead continues to ignore him.

Archie leans forward a little. “Jughead.”

Jughead whirls around so fast Archie startles and pulls back. “What?” Jughead snaps.

“I, uh… just wanted to see how it was going,” Arhcie says awkwardly.

“Are you serious?” Jughead whisper-hisses. “I agreed to be civil. I agreed not to make a scene. I agreed to act _chill_. But we aren’t friends anymore, and I don’t have to talk to you.”

Jughead turns back around and Archie slouches in his seat, his cheeks pink, that familiar slimy ball of guilt in his stomach twisting around.

The rest of his day isn’t much better, Veronica is cordial but clear about keeping a boundary between them and Betty seems to be hiding out somewhere, she isn’t in class and doesn’t answer any of his texts, which makes him feel a jolt of anxiety on top of everything else. His ex-girlfriend doesn’t seem to hate him but she certainly doesn’t want to socialize with him, one of his best friends isn’t his friend anymore, and his other best friend has disappeared on him. 

He slogs through the hallway to his locker to pack up his stuff for the day and makes his way toward the front doors. He doesn’t have a reason to rush, he has no one to hang out with and nothing to do, hours to fill until his mom comes back from work with takeout. It makes the rest of the day feel like a dark tunnel he has to drag himself through, his loneliness a bitter taste in the back of his throat, but then from down a different hallway he sees the swing of a blond ponytail in a sea of faces he doesn’t care about. 

Archie stands there determinedly, not caring that people are shoving past him in their excitement to leave school, and then Betty’s face is revealed in the crowd and the darkness around him lifts because Betty is here and everything around her goes still and quiet as she walks towards him. He stands in silence, worshipping the way she moves through the hall as though all the light follows her, glowing just for him, the bitterness washing away and warmth flooding his body.

“Hey,” he breathes when she gets to him, her face a little pale. “Are you okay?”

Betty blinks red eyes at him. “What?”

“You cut like, all of class.”

“I had a headache.” She rubs her eyes with the heels of her hand. “I laid down in the nurse’s office.”

“Oh. You didn’t text me back.”

Betty flinches a little. “Sorry, I didn’t text anybody back. I took a nap.”

“It’s fine,” he says gently, because she looks like she feels guilty. “Are you feeling better now?”

“I don’t know, I guess so.” She looks up at him and everything goes away but those clear green eyes, eyes that see straight down to his soul. “Walk me home?”

He gives her an easy smile, the first question he’s been asked today that he definitely knows the answer to. “Of course. Unless you um… you could come over, if you want to.” 

“Oh.” Betty chews on her lip. “I have a little homework.”

“Yeah, me too. We could um, do it together,” he offers.

Betty tilts her face up to him and then she smiles. “Okay.”

He holds the door open for her and they go outside, blinking in the afternoon sunshine. Betty squints, her body hunching forward like she could tip over just from wearing her backpack. He thinks about putting an arm around her or carrying her backpack for her but then Betty stops in her tracks, staring at something up the street and Archie barely stops himself from slamming into her as he twists to see what she’s looking at.

It’s Veronica, climbing into Reggie Mantle’s car, her dress riding up her thighs as she gets in and slams the car door. Archie watches, frozen, as Reggie honks the horn and pulls away from the curb, Veronica’s hair blowing in the wind as he drives them away.

“Are you okay?” Betty asks besides Archie.

He breathes through the sharp pain in his chest. “Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” 

Archie puts his arm around her shoulders and Betty leans into him. “C’mon,” he says softly. “Let's go home.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags and usual warnings apply, and a big thank you to those who are reading, leaving kudos, and/or commenting.

“Mom’s still at work,” Archie tells Betty as he unlocks the front door to his house and holds it open for her.

Betty steps inside, the silence unsettling her a little. The Andrews’ house used to be loud, in a nice, lived in sort of way. Nothing ever had to be perfect in this house, messes were allowed and if not encouraged, tolerated. _Boys,_ Mrs. Andrews would say to Betty’s mom with fond resignation, and her mom would make sympathetic noises back with mild horror on her face, because her two angelic, beautiful, _perfect_ daughters would never dream of getting dirt on their knees right before dinner or gum in their hair.

Betty misses it, the way it used to feel here. It’s so empty now, an unfamiliar quiet hanging in the air that isn’t right. She’s used to Fred bumbling around, making coffee or working on some project, Vegas running up and down the hall. She’s known them long enough to remember when Mary lived here too, with her briefcase full of files and endless emails to write on her laptop. Archie and his two parents and his imperfectly perfect family. Sure, there was dirt and messes and scraped knees but there was also love in this house, the kind of love that felt realer than in her house, with the framed photographs on the walls and everything perfectly in its place.

She wonders if Archie feels the way she feels sometimes when she comes home - like it isn’t her real house, her real life, like she’s walked into an alternate universe where her mom married F.P. instead of her dad, a world where Polly never existed and Betty has a half brother and two step siblings instead, one of whom is her ex.

Betty winces to herself. She tries her hardest not to think about it, that she and Jughead share a brother, that if things had worked out a little differently _he_ could’ve been her brother.

It makes her think of Polly and Jason, the branches of their family tree twisted and gnarled around each other, blood and maple syrup, branches that are dying, poisoned by madness like the darkness Betty knows runs through her blood.

She subtly shakes her head like she can shake away the thoughts; she’s in a house with a boy she’s loved for a decade and she’s thinking about blood and bullets. Jughead would understand, he always understood that part of her, but Archie is different. Archie is sunshine smiles and endless optimism and romantic song lyrics, milkshakes and varsity jackets, everything good about her old life wrapped up in the body of a teenage boy.

Archie follows her inside, shuts the door and locks it, checks that it’s really locked, and examines the mail he grabbed before setting it down on the entry table.

“You looking for something?” she asks.

He shrugs awkwardly and kicks off his shoes. “Still get freaked out about the tapes.”

Betty nods, biting her lip as she bends down to take her shoes off and neatly lines them up against the wall. “Like we don’t have enough to deal with.”

“Like passing senior year.” Archie runs his hand through his hair. “Kitchen?”

“Sure.” Betty follows him down the hallway and sets her backpack down by the kitchen table.

Archie starts filling up two glasses of water. “Do you want Advil or anything?”

“What?”

He frowns slightly as he hands her one of the glasses. “You said you had a headache.”

“Oh.” Betty takes the water and places it gently on a coaster before sitting down. “No thanks, I feel better now.”

Archie sits down across from her and unzips his backpack. “What are you gonna do?”

Betty pulls out a biography of Anne Sexton and a set of post-its from her backpack. “Research for my AP English paper.”

Archie squints at the book cover. “Who’s Anne Sexton?”

“This poet who killed herself in the seventies.”

“Jesus Betty.”

“What?”

“That’s kinda heavy.” Archie digs out his precalc book and his calculator.

“It’s for my topic,” she explains hesitantly. “Mental illness and its relationship to modern poetry.”

“Fun,” he says dryly.

“I get to read poetry, it is fun,” she snarks back, defensive.

“For you, maybe. I don’t get that stuff.”

“What are you talking about?” she asks incredulously. “You _write songs._ ”

“So?”

“So songs are poetry set to music! All those lyrics you write, that’s poetry Archie! You’re a poet!”

Archie stares at her, his eyes wide. “I guess I never thought about it that way.”

Betty smiles, tapping her pen. “Why do you write songs?”

“I don’t know.” Archie looks shy. “I can explain what I feel when I write a song in a way that I can’t when I talk. Once I started I just couldn’t… stop. It’s like how I make sense of everything in my head I guess.”

Betty watches him as he talks, those beautiful hands and bright eyes and thinks, _of course you love him, he’s a writer, just like you and Jughead._

“That’s because you’re a writer,” she says softly.

“Nah, you’re a writer. And Jughead. You’re like… real writers, you know? I just write songs.”

“Archie. Songs are real writing. There are… okay yeah, we’re writers, sure, but you’re an _artist_.”

Archie ducks his head. “Thanks Betty, but it’s not like it really matters.”

“What do you mean?”

“Writing songs isn’t getting me into college. At this point I don’t think there’s anything I can do to get into college.”

“Hey, don’t talk like that.” Betty pushes her book to the side and leans across the table to see what chapter he’s on in precalc. “C’mon, l can help you with this.”

“I thought you had to work on your paper.”

Betty shrugs. “It isn’t due for a month.”

“How are you _ahead_ in school?” 

“‘Cus I didn’t lose almost a year in juvie. Let's get started, we totally have enough time to get through all of this before dinner.”

*

His mom gets home a little after seven, bringing the scent of Italian food with her as she comes into the kitchen carrying a bag of takeout.

“Hey kids,” she says warmly, setting the bag of food on the counter. “Betty, it’s nice to see you sweetheart.”

“Thanks, you too.” Betty gives his mom a shy smile. “I should probably go, I don’t want to get in the way of dinner.”

“Oh don’t be silly. You should stay, we have plenty.”

Archie watches Betty chew on her lip. “I’ll have to ask my mother.”

“Oh, I’ll text your mom and let her know, it’ll be fine.” His mom smiles and shakes some hair out of her face. “I’m gonna go change, would you kids mind setting the table?”

“Of course not,” Betty answers for them, the dutiful daughter even in someone else’s house.

His mom goes upstairs and Betty gets started without him, because she grew up in this house too and knows where everything is. Archie clears their school things off the table and lays napkins at each place, and Betty brings a stack of plates over. Archie gets silverware and lays them out next to the plates, the two of them working together without needing to talk.

It’s something he likes about them, that they’ve known each other for so long they can be comfortable around each other without needing to say anything. It’s just easy.

When his mom comes down, wearing one of his old football sweatshirts and a pair of jeans, Archie helps her unpack the food buffet-style on the table: a tinfoil wrapped roll of garlic bread, containers of fettuccine alfredo and spinach ravioli and spaghetti with meatballs.

Betty and Archie sit back down across from each other and his mom fills up a glass of wine before seating herself at the head of the table. Archie digs in and only notices Betty hasn’t touched anything after he and his mom have full plates and he’s about to demolish his spaghetti.

“You good?” he asks hesitantly.

Betty gives them a tight smile. “Yeah, everything looks so good. I don’t know what to have.”

He shrugs. “Have whatever you want, it’s not like we don’t have enough.”

She gives him the kind of tight smile that means he said the wrong thing but she’s being too nice to call him out. He taps his fork against his plate anxiously and tries to not-watch her stare over the food like she’s making an extremely important decision worthy of prolonged deliberation.

She chooses the ravioli eventually, putting exactly one scoop onto her plate along with a piece of garlic bread. He relaxes a little, he’s pretty sure she missed lunch and Betty’s always been a little bit weird around food. He always chalked it up to her mom but now he’s starting to notice that Betty gets nervous eating even when her mom isn’t around, like it’s been ingrained in her to self-police what she eats.

“Betty, tell me about Yale.” His mom takes a big sip of wine. “You must be so excited.”

Betty chases a piece of ravioli around her plate with her fork. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet.”

“Your mom must be so thrilled.”

Betty raises one shoulder. “Yeah.”

“We always knew you’d go places, Betty. And an Ivy, no less.”

The blatant pride in his mom's voice makes him want to slink down to the floor. Of course his mom is more proud of Betty than him, Betty got into college. Betty is _going places,_ Betty did what she was supposed to do and Archie’s a failure, another forgotten football hero, the son of a dead man and sometimes Archie feels it, the absolute shame of who he is now, and he’s grateful that his dad isn’t alive to see the kind of person he’s become. 

Archie was supposed to be a quarterback, he was supposed to follow in Jason’s footsteps to glory. He was supposed to go to college, he was supposed to ask Betty to marry him, he was supposed to _be_ someone.

Betty looks distinctly uncomfortable with all the attention being directed at her. “It’s really not that big a deal,” she says. 

“Don’t be so modest,” his mom protests. “Do you know how hard it is to get into Yale? All the grades and scores you have to have just to be considered? Lucky for Archie the Navy is being a little less rigid about those things.”

His heart feels like it drops to his stomach and shoots back up to his throat. 

Betty goes still, the fork slipping out of her grip and clattering to her plate. “Excuse me?”

His mom smiles and reaches over to squeeze his shoulder and he’s going to throw up, oh god, he really might. “Nothing this year has gone to plan but we always figure things out.”

Betty stares at them, her eyes getting wider and wider. “I’m, um.” She skids back from the table suddenly, reaching for her backpack. “I wasn’t feeling well at school and I think I need to go home now.”

“Betty.” Archie jumps up from his chair but Betty shoots daggers at him with her eyes, like, _stay the fuck away_.

His mom gives Betty a concerned look. “Okay, honey.”

“I’m sorry,” Betty stammers. “I’m so sorry. I have to, I have to go.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he announces.

Betty shoulders her backpack and looks at the kitchen door like she’s thinking of making a run for it. “No thanks.”

“I wasn’t asking,” he snaps, not caring that his mom is staring between the two of them in bafflement.

“I’m leaving, do whatever you want,” Betty says icily, in a tone of voice he’s absolutely sure she learned from Veronica. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Andrews.”

Betty walks around the table and rushes out of the kitchen, glaring at him when he’s right behind her at the front door, shoving on their shoes like they’re racing. He lets her go out first and follows her down his steps, waiting for her to lose her shit. Betty makes it to the edge of her front yard, shrugs off her backpack and _throws_ it as hard as she can towards the porch. Archie stares at her, he can’t remember if he’s ever seen Betty throw anything just because she was upset before.

He really hopes her laptop wasn’t in there, and then wonders why the fuck that’s his concern, not the girl looking at him with furious tears streaming down her face.

“Were you ever going to tell me?” she whisper-shouts at him.

He can hardly look at her. “I just… didn’t know how to tell you guys.”

Betty’s mouth drops open. “You haven’t told _Veronica?_ ”

“I haven’t told anyone,” he admits.

“Oh my god.” Betty heaves out a sob and covers her face with her hands. “Oh my god.”

“Betty.” He starts to close the gap between them but Betty stumbles back, wiping her face with the backs of her hands.

“How could you?” she cries. “How could you start this whole thing with me when you knew that you’d be leaving for the fucking _Navy?_ ”

He stares blankly at her. “I don’t… I didn’t think about that. They’re not, they don't have anything to do with each other.”

Betty lets out a hysterical laugh. “So what, I was going to wake up one morning and you’d be gone for, like, basic training? Are you being serious right now?”

“Look, it was my mom's idea, okay? It like, just happened, I haven’t really thought about it seriously yet.”

“Of course you haven’t.” Betty’s voice is scathing even through her tears. “Because you don’t think about anything seriously.”

“What?” he asks, bewildered.

“You just do stuff and hope it’ll work out and if people get hurt oh well, it’s not like you _meant_ for it to happen, right? You’re Archie Andrews, you’re one of the good guys. You couldn’t possibly be the bad guy, because you're _Archie_.”

“Betty” -

“I’m so stupid.” Betty sniffs and rubs her eyes. “I can’t believe it. You were, weren’t you? You were just going to go along pretending like it wasn’t happening, weren’t you?”

“I don’t even know if I want to go!”

“Well it sure sounds like you’re going according to how happy your mom was!”

“Well it’s not like I really have a choice! Some of us aren’t perfect like you, Betty!”

Betty stops crying suddenly, like he’s shocked her out of it. “I can’t believe you would say that to me.”

“I’m sorry.” The guilt hits him like a four by four over the head. “Shit, Betty” -

“Don’t.” Her voice is quiet but full of steel. “I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say.”

“Betty, I’m _sorry_.”

Betty stands there and this is it, he realizes, this is when he loses both of them. First Veronica, then Betty. She squares her shoulders and looks right at him, her eyes shimmering with tears and why does she have to be so beautiful when she cries, why can’t he stop staring at her, why does his heart hurt so much?

Why does he do this to himself? To _her?_

Betty presses her lips together and then she gives him the saddest smile he’s ever seen. “Fuck you, Archie Andrews.”

She turns on her heel and walks away from him, collects her backpack, rushes up her front stairs, and slams the front door behind her, like she’s shutting him out of her existence.

And if he’s being honest with himself, maybe that’s what he deserves.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it took me literally a few months to get this chapter out! I’ve been so stressed out about, well, life but I’m still working on all my fics! Please enjoy the ‘Betty’ reference in this chapter because I just couldn’t help myself.

Betty is shaking when she goes inside her house, her backpack slipping out of her grip and landing on the floor of the foyer with a thud.

She leaves it there, rushing up the stairs to run to the second floor bathroom. She kicks the door shut and falls to her knees in front of the toilet, gasping for breath as sourness rises up the back of her throat.

Archie is leaving her. Archie is leaving and he wasn’t going to tell her.

Archie is leaving and Jughead is going to Iowa and Veronica hates her and fucking Polly is gone and Betty gags, spitting bile into the toilet until she’s coughing.

She drags herself up and wipes her mouth with toilet paper, flushes, and rinses out her mouth with mouthwash. In the mirror her eyes are glassy and her cheeks are pink because she isn’t cool like Veronica, she’s terrible at hiding her feelings. Everything shows on her face - her shame, her embarrassment, her fear.

“You’re pathetic,” she whispers to herself in the mirror.

When she goes out into the hallway Jughead is standing in the doorway of the guest room he’s been sleeping in, furrowing his brow at her.

“You okay?” he asks quietly.

“Why do you even care?” she snaps back, and starts crying again.

He pushes off his door frame and then steps back, like he was thinking of going to her before stopping himself. “You’re upset.”

She covers her face with her palms. “Yeah, Jug, I’m obviously upset!”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What’s the point? You're the one that wanted to officially break up, and anyway, you’re leaving!”

His face darkness. “So? What do you care? I got into college, can’t you just be happy for me?”

She sniffs and wipes her eyes. “I just… I didn’t want it to go this way.”

“You made it go this way, Betty.”

She chokes on a sob. “I know.”

“You seem real happy with your decisions,” he says bitterly. “Hope it was worth it.”

Her body goes rigid. “It’s not like that.”

He raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “No?”

“I… Jug, I felt bad all the time, and nothing made it better, and I tried and I tried but I couldn’t pretend anymore, and I wasn’t being fair to you and you didn’t… you didn’t deserve that.”

“What about Archie? Did he make it better?”

“No,” Betty sniffs. “But he made me forget.”

*

Archie doesn’t bother stopping at the Cooper’s house on the way to school in the morning. Based on how upset Betty was when she went home yesterday, he’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to see him right now. It gives him a stomachache to think about it, Betty giving him that wide eyed betrayed look while tears ran down her flushed cheeks.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he could hurt her, like that. He isn’t like Betty, the sun doesn’t smile down on him with opportunities. He thought he was doing the right thing, making a choice about his future, whether he was happy with it or not. He thought that’s what growing up means - taking charge of your life, taking the mess you’ve made and doing your honest best and turning that into a life that’s decent, respectable. Honorable.

He guesses it wasn’t so honorable to not tell Betty, or Veronica, to make a choice without thinking about how they would be affected by it.

He stops in front of the steps outside her house, staring up at the porch anyway. Wishing he could tell her that he’s sorry. Thinking about kissing it better, taking all her hurt away. 

God, he’s such an idiot. Betty probably wouldn’t even come to the door.

So he keeps walking, thinking about her all the way to school.

He doesn’t give himself time to second guess the plan he came up with at two in the morning last night, wide awake in bed, wondering if Betty was right, if it’s messed up that he didn’t tell her or Veronica, as if he owes them that.

He genuinely doesn’t know if that’s something he’s just like, supposed to do, but for some reason it didn’t occur to him, because all he does now is fuck up.

Veronica is standing at her locker, wearing a dress he hasn’t seen before - pale blue, with little yellow flowers around the color, a white headband holding her hair back. He breathes to the beat of his pounding heart as he walks over to her, praying that she doesn’t outright humiliate him.

“Can I talk to you?” he asks quietly. “It’s an emergency.”

The color starts to drain out her face. “What happened?”

He instantly regrets his words. He knows better, an emergency in Riverdale means death or major injury, serial killers and gang wars and drugs and blood running through the streets.

“Not like that,” he tries to assure her. “I… I know you’re still angry at me and stuff, which you totally have the right to be! But I… I think I messed up, Ronnie.”

She looks unimpressed. “What else is new?”

He winces. “I, uh… I’m joining the Navy.”

For a moment nothing happens, and then Veronica’s face floods with rage. “I’m sorry, you’re what?”

“It was my mom’s idea,” he says meekly. “My grades are shit V, I’ll be lucky if they let me walk at graduation. I’m running out of options.”

“Oh, so you were just gonna _join the Navy?_ Are you actually insane?”

“Veronica” -

“So you take some classes over and graduate late, who cares? Or community college, or you could teach guitar - god Archie, of all the options you have you really want to join the Navy?”

“I…” Archie stares at her, he hadn’t really figured that what he wanted mattered so much as just fucking choosing something.

“I - were you ever going to tell me?”

“Okay, why does everyone just assume I wasn’t going to tell them?”

“Um, because you never mentioned it to me when I was your girlfriend, which in case you’ve forgotten, was very recently? Or anyone?”

“I wasn’t, like, keeping it a secret.”

“Well, you haven’t been very open. You’ve heard all about me and Betty’s Ivy League drama for months, Jughead’s been bragging nonstop about Iowa, and you haven’t said anything about this” -

“Jesus Veronica, there’s been a lot going on, okay?”

She glares at him. “I’m aware of that.”

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “I guess you’re right.”

“Did Betty find out or something?” Her voice is tense. “Is that why you’re upset?”

Betty, looking at him like he broke her heart all over again. He can only nod, his throat tight with shame.

“I’m sorry, Archie.” Her voice is surprisingly gentle. “But it isn’t my job to clean up your messes for you anymore.”

Veronica pats him on the forearm and walks away, leaving him alone in the hallway, standing next to his ex-girlfriend’s locker.

*

Betty drags herself through school that day, barely functioning enough to follow what’s happening in her classes. She has a headache from crying, her eyes are still a little red, and there’s a pit in her stomach that won’t go away.

She’s sick with shame over how she reacted last night, like a fucking baby. It’s embarrassing for her to lose control like that. She’d worked so hard to build up a defense against Archie, so she could be friends with him without bursting into tears every time she thought about the night where she told him she loved him and he walked away, he left her standing on the sidewalk in her pink dress, alone with her tears and her broken heart.

That’s what she feels like right now, that fifteen year old girl whose love was handed back to her with a shrug, her beating heart exposed and unwanted. 

The worst part is that she wants Archie anyway - she wants him to fix it, she wants him to take her in his arms and tell her he didn’t mean it, that he loves her back, that he never wanted to hurt her.

She wants him to be the boy she loved, the one who proposed to her when they were kids, the one who was always there, the one person who really knew her before she was an accused murderer or the daughter of a serial killer or the girlfriend of the town weirdo, the best friend of a mob princess, Polly’s uptight little sister, all the labels other people in this town have put on her.

Archie never did that to her, never tried to label her and put her in a box. He always let her be herself. Just Betty.

She takes the long way home from school so she doesn’t have to worry about running into him, trudging the whole way back heel to toe, headphones on. She knows she shouldn’t walk alone like this, that it makes her a target, but she doesn’t care, not really. It’s hard for her to feel afraid right now, when she already feels so bad, when it’s hard to care about herself.

She’s just a girl, a broken girl, who everyone abandons and lies to and uses as a pawn and Betty’s so tired of the game, of strategizing until her head hurts, of always having to defend, and defend, and strike, a never ending cycle. 

She wonders what it would take to get off the board, what queen must be sacrificed, how many pieces she’ll have to knock down and take. Or maybe the board is Riverdale itself, and the only way out is to leave, get out before she’s just another piece of collateral damage.

The house is empty when she gets home; Betty uses her key to get in and goes right up to her room. She purposefully doesn’t look toward the window, doesn’t imagine Archie in his room, what he’s doing, if he feels as bad as she does.

It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. It’s not like he’s her boyfriend, it’s not like he actually did anything wrong, it’s not like he owes her anything. He’s never owed her anything.

All she ever wanted was his love.

*

Betty’s mom gives him a pinched look when she open the front door after dinner. “Can I help you, Archie?”

“Um, hi, is Betty home? I was wondering if she wanted to go on a run with me?”

Mrs. Cooper lets out a long sigh. “Give me a minute.”

She shuts the door and leaves him on the porch, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. She comes back a few minutes later, that tight look still on her face. “Betty will be out in a minute.”

She walks away and Archie waits on the porch of the house of the girl he’s loved since he was a boy, the girl he betrayed and hurt and never picked first, the girl whose heart he smashed on the sidewalk pavement, without a second thought, because he didn’t think back then, beyond what he wanted.

Archie at fifteen wanted glory, he wanted sex and trophies and he wanted to _win_ , he wanted so many things that seem unbelievable to him now. 

It’s one of his biggest shames, that he let a beautiful girl, his best friend, confess her love to him and he carelessly rejected it. 

It’s not that he regrets it, not _exactly_. He didn’t want it back then, a relationship like that, because Betty isn’t the kind of girl you mess around with, she’s the girl you marry, _ask me again when we’re eighteen_ , and he was only fifteen, he wanted to kiss Veronica in a closet and party with his friends, he wanted to have fun.

He didn’t know what was going to happen back then, that he was staring down the barrel of three long years of violence, blood, and horrific crimes. He didn’t know that Betty was going to be tortured by a darkness that’s left a permanent mark on her, he didn’t know, but it doesn’t change anything, he hurt his best friend and he’s seeing now that it never went away, that Betty has carried this wound inside herself since that night and never revealed it.

She comes outside wearing black running tights and a loose blue tee shirt, her hair in another perfect ponytail. She avoids his eyes as she shuts the door behind herself, shoulders a little slumped, a sure sign she’s feeling down.

“I need to warm up,” she murmurs, slipping past him to go down the steps.

He jogs down them and walks silently next to her, swinging his arms a little. Betty’s pale, like she isn’t feeling well, but after a couple of blocks she breaks into a jog and he easily keeps up with her. It’s not totally dark out, the sky a pretty shade of blue/indigo/violet and Betty is next to him with her hair swinging as she jogs and he wants to kiss her, he wants to tell her he’s sorry, he wants to erase the last three years and start over, live in a world where he and Betty got to stay innocent for a little longer.

But he can’t, so he runs, setting the pace for him and Betty. It smells of ozone, dark clouds overhead and it’s just the two of them, the steady rhythm of their feet on the sidewalk and the sound of their breathing and at least she’s here, with him, she didn’t shut the door in his face, some part of her doesn’t totally hate him.

He knows he should say something to her, be the bigger person and apologize, but she seems so fragile to him, easily hurt and he doesn’t want to mess up again, say the wrong thing and kill the little bit of hope that she’s forgiven him.

There’s a loud clap of thunder overhead and Betty startles, slowing down as her head tips up to the sky. “Is it supposed to storm?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, noticing how the branches of a tree a few feet away from him are swaying in the wind.

“Maybe we should go back,” Betty says hesitantly.

“Yeah, maybe.” Raindrops start to fall, dotting the sidewalk. “Okay, yeah.”

Betty starts to turn around but the rain turns into a sudden downpour and within seconds they’re both soaked, staring at each other in shock. 

He grabs her by the wrist and pulls her over to the tree, huddling under the branches as he pushes Betty against the trunk and leans over her, trying to block her from the rain as water trickles down his forehead and the back of his neck.

Betty looks up at him with stormy green eyes, eyelashes dark and beaded with raindrops. “Archie,” she breathes.

She looks beautiful and broken and it’s his fault, he did this to her, he dropped her in favor of someone new and shiny and didn’t even check to see if she got hurt. He took her at her word, that she was okay, because he _wanted_ her to be okay, he wanted to keep kissing Veronica and he didn’t see it back then, how deeply it cut Betty. He thought it was a crush, he thought she would get over it.

He didn’t know back then, that this is how someone looks at you when they love you as deeply as Betty loves him. That tear filled eyes and trembling lips and flushed cheeks are a precious display of emotion he should respect and honor, not write off as a silly girl’s daydreams.

He cups her face carefully, cold skin against his warm palms and Betty shudders but she doesn’t pull away. He smooths wet strands of hair away from her face, wipes his thumbs under her eyes, cradles the back of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers hoarsely, barely loud enough to be heard over the rain.

Her face crumples, eyes squeezing shut too late to stop tears from streaming down her cheeks. “Archie.” It comes out like a sob.

He curls over her, fingers brushing away her tears, lips kissing her hairline, her forehead, her eyelids. “I’m sorry, Betty, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She sobs, hands reaching out to twist in his shirt. “I can’t… I can’t do this again, I can’t, please Archie, I can’t.”

“Do what?” he asks, afraid of how she sounds, like she’s being torn inside out.

“Please,” she begs, her eyes opening dramatically. “Please don’t hurt me again like that, I can’t, I can’t do this again with you Archie, please, don’t.”

“Betty,” he says desperately. “Okay, it’s okay, I won’t, Betty “ -

“But you do,” she chokes out. “And I can’t take… I can’t do it anymore.”

“Tell me what to do,” he pleads. “Tell me how to fix this.”

“You left me.” He can feel her shaking, her voice ragged. “You left me there after I told you I loved you and you told me I was perfect but if I was perfect why didn’t you want me? Why didn’t you want me?”

“I would’ve ruined you,” he says thickly. “You were too good for me, you were beautiful and smart and nice” -

“That’s not true!” Her eyes flash with anger. “That’s just… that’s just an idealized version of me that never existed!”

“I was fucking my teacher,” he growls out. “That’s who you wanted to be with? Some asshole who lost his virginity to Grundy, the guy who kissed your new friend in a closet even though it hurt your feelings?”

“I wanted you!” she yells. “Stop acting like you’re some giant fuckup and I’m some precious little princess who can’t handle real life! I wouldn’t have… god Archie, I was in love with you, and you broke my heart!”

“I know.” He pulls one of his hands away to rub at his eyes. “I know I did.”

“You left me,” she says again, her voice weak. “You’re leaving me.”

She chokes back another sob, and it’s too much, the guilt, the responsibility. He crumples over her, arms holding her close, feeling her shake and cry against him. “I’m right here,” he murmurs. “I’m right here, Betty.”

“You _hurt_ me,” she whimpers accusingly, face buried in his chest.

“If I could take it back I would,” he tells her. “If I could stop you from feeling any pain, I’d do it. I’d take it all Betty, but I can’t, and I know you don’t trust me anymore, not like before, but I swear, I’ll never hurt you like that again, I promise.”

She lifts her head and she looks so lost, adrift, desperate. “Don’t leave me.” 

She’s still crying, raw and begging him to stay and Archie can’t fuck this up again, he doesn’t know what’s going to happen with them but he knows where his loyalty lies and he knows what’s right and he knows what’s in his heart, becuase he isn’t a dumb fifteen year old anymore, he’s a man, and he wants to be a good one.

“Okay,” he tells her. “I won’t leave.”

Her lips part, quivering. “Really?”

“I never really wanted to join the Navy, anyway,” he shrugs. “I don’t… that’s not something I have to do. I, er… Veronica gave me some ideas.

“You told Veronica?”

“Yeah.”

She snorts. “And she left you in one piece?”

He laughs. “Yeah, she was kinda pissed off, and then listed like three other things I could do instead.”

Betty gives him a tired attempt at a smile. “So you’re really going to stay? You’re not saying this ‘cus you think it’s what I want?”

“I want to stay,” and as he says the words he realizes how true they are. “I mean, I have to figure out a backup plan, but yeah, I want to be here for the summer with all you guys. With you.”

“Archie.” Betty starts crying again.

“Shh, it’s okay.” He brushes his cheek against hers, catches her chin in one hand. “It’s okay, Betty. I’d never leave you, okay? I’ll always be here for you.”

She turns her face towards him, making little whimpering cries as she nods, her arms encircling his waist. “I, I, don’t want you to stay if it’s just for me” -

“Stop, shh.” He kisses her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “I’m staying for me. My mom talked me into the whole thing anyway. I’m staying, okay?”

“Okay,” she cries, and catches his bottom lip in her teeth and then they’re kissing, soaking wet and savage with each other, hands grabbing at shirts and hair and skin, drowning in each other as rain falls all around them.


End file.
